Wearing green bandannas and holding pro-abortion rights posters, hundreds of people gathered at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise on Saturday for Idaho Abortion Rights’ “Flip the State” Women’s March rally.
Across the country, groups participating in marches that were targeted for Oct. 8 — one month before Election Day — demanded more access in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of landmark cases that had granted abortion rights in 1973. It’s part of an expectation described on the National Women’s March that there will be a “Women’s Wave” in the midterms, with an increase in voting and in electing women and candidates favoring abortion rights.
In Idaho, abortion is now illegal in almost all instances, with legal challenges pending before the Idaho Supreme Court. On Sept. 23, the University of Idaho made national news after warning staff and faculty against promoting services for the “prevention of conception.”
More than 10 speakers stepped forward at Saturday’s Boise event, including Democrats running for office, community organizers and nonprofit leaders. And they covered more topics than abortion, including rights for Native Americans — Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day in Idaho — and women’s rights battles in Iran.
Terri Pickens-Manweiler, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, spoke first and talked about spending the past six years on the board of directors for Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky.
“We saw this coming six years ago when we had somebody elected into the White House that we knew was probably the worst possible outcome for reproductive rights and for women’s bodily autonomy,” she said, referring to former President Donald Trump, who was able to appoint three Supreme Court justices, marking a pivotal turn.
Pickens-Manweiler said she frets about her 18-year-old daughter having less reproductive freedom than she has had in her lifetime.
“There’s only one way in Idaho that we’re going to be able to restore reproductive health care, and that is to vote them all out,” she said.
Josi Christensen, the Democratic House candidate for Idaho’s District 21, said she knew “people who were happy when Roe v. Wade was overturned.”
“These people are important to me and many of them are even related to me. I can give most of them the benefit of the doubt, because they feel that they’re standing up for a moral cause, and I admire people that act according to their convictions. That’s what we’re all doing here today.
“But when one person’s moral cause crosses into the space of another living person, agency and health, I will not be silent.”
Christensen, who said in her speech that she considers herself a patriot who recognizes the country’s flaws, also took time to talk about the treatment of Native Americans and other minorities in the U.S.
Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day in Idaho, having had that recognition since a proclamation from Gov. Brad Little in 2019. President Joe Biden made a similar federal proclamation in 2021, placing Indigenous Peoples Day alongside the Columbus Day holiday that Congress created nationally in 1937.
“I love my country enough to be proud to be an American, but I’m not blind,” Christensen said. “This country is not exceptional. It is as good as it is honest about the harm that it has done to indigenous people on U.S. soil we stand, to the people of color who were shipped here as slaves to physically build the government and economic system on which our country stands.”
Christensen ended her speech quoting American labor leader Dolores Huerta.
“Respecting other people’s rights is peace,” she repeated to the crowd.
Boise’s Iranian community and women’s rights
At the end of the rally, organizers held a vigil for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died on Sept. 16 in Tehran after being detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly wearing a hijab in an improper way.
Community organizers said they invited members of Boise’s Iranian community to stand in solidarity with their cause.
Kimra Luna, co-founder of Idaho Abortion Rights, told the crowd she hasn’t been able to contact a friend in Iran for weeks, after the government shut off internet access to contain growing protests after Amini’s death.
Mohad Baboli, an Iranian who lives in the Treasure Valley, condemned the Iranian government’s actions and called on governments worldwide to sanction Iran’s military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“We ask for people to be our voice and for governments to stop legitimizing the Islamic Republic of Iran,” she said.
