By Becky Uranga
Reader Contributor
I’ve been an OB-GYN serving Idaho families for more than 15 years. I love this job and the journeys I get to walk alongside my patients — the dearly wanted pregnancies, the hard diagnoses, the families I’ve known for a decade or more. I write this for them.
For the past four years, Idahoans have lived under an extreme abortion ban, one with no exceptions for health of the mother or in cases of a doomed pregnancy. And I want to tell you plainly what that has meant for the patients I care for and love.
I have watched insurance companies deny payment for miscarriage treatment because, in medical terms, that treatment is classified as an abortion.
I have sent patients — mid-pregnancy, frightened, after receiving the devastating diagnosis that their fetus has a heartbeat but no brain — by plane to Salt Lake City because, under Idaho law, I could do nothing for them.
I have had patients tell me they’re considering leaving the state because they don’t feel safe growing their family here anymore. I have taken on new patients who had a 25-year relationship with their doctor, my beloved colleague, who left Idaho because she could no longer practice here under these cruel conditions.
This is the reality of Idaho’s extreme abortion ban.
Idaho’s ban removes the doctor’s ability to act on their own medical judgment, and it removes the patient’s ability to trust that their doctor still can.
We have the opportunity to restore Idaho’s law to what worked well for nearly 50 years. I’m supporting Proposition 1, to restore that standard of care to how it was before the current ban took effect — back when doctors like me regularly counseled families through difficult decisions, heartbreaking visits, and the thousands of things that can and do complicate a pregnancy, instead of letting politicians and politics infiltrate our exam rooms.
As a practicing Catholic, I am wholeheartedly pro-life. I strive to fulfill my vocation in a way that respects both my faith and medical training. This current ban, with its disregard for the health of the mother and the sanctity of the patient-doctor relationship, does neither.
I believe voting yes on Prop. 1 will reduce wait times to see all Idaho doctors, for any health concerns you and your family may have. It also means physicians like me can go back to providing the best health care for our patients without the risk of felony criminalization hanging over our heads.
If we can unite as Idahoans to pass Prop. 1, I won’t have to send more patients to Utah for the care they need. It will mean that my daughter — and your daughters — feel that someday they can build a life and family here in her home state, safely getting the care they need to do so.
And most of all, passing Prop. 1 will restore the sacred space between doctors and our patients, allowing us to honor your beliefs and your medical privacy in the exam room without any external pressures from politicians.
I am staying in Idaho regardless. I love my patients too much to leave. But I am asking Idaho voters to give me, and every doctor like me, the grace and ability to actually take care of my patients again. Join me in voting “yes” on Prop. 1 on Nov. 3.
Dr. Becky Uranga is a mother and Idaho OB-GYN practicing in Ada and Canyon counties.
