Idaho moms and grandmothers are taking the fight for abortion rights to their neighbors’ doors

She approached her neighbors, asking them if she could talk to them about Idaho’s abortion laws, if they’d heard about Proposition 1 or if they knew how they planned to vote. When a man biking past her house saw the giant “YES on Prop 1” sign on her lawn, he yelled “baby killer” at her. Wirsching, who was unloading groceries from her car, ran into the street to stop him.

She thought if they could have a conversation, she could help him understand. She even started baking batches of chocolate chip cookies and loaves of banana bread for the campaign staffers behind the effort to overturn her state’s abortion ban. It was the perfect excuse to drive the half hour from her home in Meridian to Boise, pet the office cat and hug the people who now may as well be family.

On some days, it seems as if the campaign to overturn Idaho’s abortion ban has taken over Wirsching’s life. But just a year ago, this grandmother living outside of Boise would hardly have called herself a political woman. She supported abortion rights, she said, and mourned the overturn of Roe v.

Still, she never thought the issue could shape her own life so intimately. That changed when her youngest daughter, Abby Nichols, was pregnant with her first child. Near the end of her first trimester, Nichols learned her fetus had trisomy 18, a genetic anomaly that stunts development.

Only 10 percent of babies born with the condition survive to their first birthday. When Nichols decided to end her pregnancy — which she felt would spare needless suffering — she couldn’t get help in Idaho. After contacting medical providers in Colorado and Washington, she finally found an appointment in Seattle.

Her family was shocked about the abortion law in their state, one of the most severe in the country. The ban allows abortions to save a pregnant person’s life but doesn’t have an exception for the health of the patient or when there is little chance of having a baby who will live. What are you talking about?’” Days before her procedure, Nichols saw her doctor in Idaho one more time, hoping that she might have already miscarried — that she wouldn’t need to travel for an abortion.