Idaho House Health and Welfare Committee Chairperson John Vander Woude, R-Nampa, was no doubt being sincere when he told the New York Times that until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the anti-abortion rights advocates within the GOP-led Legislature were more like the proverbial dog chasing the car.

Sure, they could pass bills banning abortions in the Gem State, but it was only a theoretical quest until the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling.

Then the dog caught the car.

“We never looked that close, and what exactly that bill said and how it was written and language that was in it,” Vander Woude told the Times. “We did that thinking Roe v. Wade was never going to get overturned. And then, when it got overturned, we said, ‘OK, now we have to take a really close look at the definitions.’ ”

Here’s what Vander Woude and his GOP legislative colleagues have learned in the past year:

Abortion care is part of health care. There is no compartmentalizing one from the other. If you restrict or ban abortions, you interfere with the treatment of expectant mothers, particularly those who experience complications.

Maternal health care depends on a pyramid, beginning with nurses and midwives, then extending toward physicians and ultimately maternal-fetal specialists. If — as is occurring in Idaho — the handful of specialists working in the state move out, health care providers lose access to their expertise that is so vital in crisis cases.

Idaho’s exemption for abortions — essentially when the woman’s life is endangered — is too narrow. You can’t practice medicine if the health of the woman can’t be considered. Doctors accustomed to facing civil judgments are unwilling to balance the lives of their patients with the prospect of going to prison for two to five years and paying $20,000 fines.

Many of the women who seek abortions in Idaho badly wanted to deliver their babies until something went horribly wrong. And when that happened, Idaho’s abortion ban put them at risk.

There was Carmen Broesder, who endured a 19-day miscarriage because she was denied dilation and curettage surgery during three trips to the emergency room.

Jennifer Adkins faced a “mirror syndrome” — in essence suffering the same ailments affecting her terminal fetus — but could not obtain an abortion in Idaho. She traveled to Oregon, but the costs undermined the Adkins’ family finances.

“It isn’t safe to be pregnant in Idaho,” Adkins said.

Jillaine St. Michel’s fetus faced “severe developmental conditions.” Kayla Smith’s fetus would not survive a severe congential heart condition, and carrying the pregnancy to term carried risks of preeclampsia.

Both women got abortions in another state.

At 16 weeks, Rebecca Vincen-Brown discovered her fetus’ serious genetic condition made survival unlikely and put her own health at risk. She drove to Oregon for an abortion but “passed the pregnancy in a hotel bathroom as her daughter slept on the other side of the door.”

Adkins, St. Michel, Smith and Vincen-Brown are among plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging abortion bans in Idaho, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Joining them in that effort is Jaci Statton, who was denied care for a crisis pregnancy in her own state of Oklahoma “until she was actively crashing in front of them or on the verge of a heart attack.” Told to wait in a parking lot, Statton instead endured three hours on the road until she reached a state where abortion was legal.

Stories, such as the one Broesder told on TikTok, are having an effect across the country, even in states where abortion remains safe and legal. A poll taken by All In Together, a nonprofit women’s civic education organization, and the pollster Echelon Insights, reports that 34% of women ages 19-39 have “decided not to get pregnant due to concerns about managing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.”

So you’d think lawmakers such as Vander Woude would calibrate their goals with the realities they’ve encountered.

But with the exception of tweaking their abortion ban to exclude ectopic pregnancies or molar pregnancies, they’ve doubled down on undermining women’s health care:

They rejected the health care community’s pleas to include health of the woman among the abortion ban exceptions.

They criminalized helping a minor female obtain a legal abortion in another state. Attorney General Raul Labrador even went so far as to suggest an Idaho health care provider who discussed a patient’s options in another state could be prosecuted under the law.

Lawmakers discontinued the Maternal Mortality Review Committee.

They also refused to extend 12 months of postpartum Medicaid coverage.

Passed in 2021 before Roe’s reversal, Idaho’s No Public Funds for Abortion Act continues to serve as a gag rule on academic freedom at the college level and could interfere with the medical education of Idaho students. There’s been no serious attempt to modify it.

Lawmakers not only refuse to provide pervasive, scientifically appropriate sex education in the schools, but they’ve attempted to scale back what’s now available. The Senate voted 28-7 to block sex education through the fifth grade. Two years ago, it was the House’s turn when it voted 50-12 to keep students out of sex education classes unless their parents “opted-in.” Among those who voted for it was Vander Woude.

Simply put, this is no job for politicians. As conservative columnist Mona Charen concluded last month: “It’s time for the anti-abortion movement to face reality: The attempt to limit abortions through the law is a failure.” — M.T.