Under Idaho’s abortion ban, a family confronts life-or-death reality — and a crisis of faith

Desi Ballis didn’t understand why her doctor needed her to go to Utah.

She lay on an exam table in Boise, her pregnant belly wet with ultrasound gel. At 38, she’d done various genetic tests that confirmed her baby was developing normally. Its small features looked perfect on the screen.

But her baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Her 20-week ultrasound in February 2024 showed findings of hydrops fetalis, an often lethal condition where fluid builds up in the fetus’ body, according to Desi’s medical records. Her baby would almost certainly die before delivery. If she remained pregnant, Desi risked dying, too.

She remembers the tears in the ultrasound technician’s eyes as the doctor calmly repeated, “I need you to get to Salt Lake.”

He had already notified a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Salt Lake City about her case, he told her. That doctor would be in touch soon.

“I could just tell he wanted to say something and he couldn’t,” Desi said. “It was just such an awful, eerie feeling.”

It wasn’t until later that day, when the Utah doctor called on her drive home, that Desi learned the blunt truth: She might need an abortion to save her own life. And she would have to leave Idaho to get it.

Before that moment, Desi hadn’t reflected much on Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. As a Christian, she knew that some people within her rural community didn’t support elective abortions, but she figured that if a woman really needed one, she could get it.

But the Ballises had entered a moment of extreme uncertainty about abortion rights in Idaho. Lawmakers had passed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, a trigger law that took effect in August 2022, two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed the right to abortion nationwide. Idaho’s ban includes an exception to “prevent the death of the pregnant woman” — but none for preventing severe health consequences that might arise.

Idaho’s near-total ban, like others in states such as Texas and Tennessee, has been caught up in lawsuits claiming that its exception for medical emergencies is too narrow. While the litigation proceeds, emergency abortions remain available for patients at certain hospitals in Idaho. In rare circumstances, Idaho physicians — unclear on how to interpret the law and not wanting to risk a prison sentence or their patients’ health — send pregnant women across state lines for treatment before their conditions become dire.

Desi’s pregnancy took place in a six-month period between January and June 2024 when the U.S. Supreme Court let Idaho’s abortion law go into full effect even in medical emergencies. In that period, Idaho families and doctors were given a preview of what reproductive health care looks like in a state where nearly all abortions are a crime. Within four months, St. Luke’s Health System, which delivers about 40% of the state’s babies, reported that it had to put six different pregnant patients on flights to neighboring states for treatment, a sharp increase from just one in all of 2023. That’s not counting those who drove themselves out of state like Desi.

Doctors, mothers and advocates who have fought to expand Idaho’s medical exception got a partial victory on April 11, when a state judge ruled that abortions are allowed when a pregnant person faces a “non-negligible” risk of dying sooner without one. Reproductive rights advocates celebrated the step forward, though Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador also claimed it as a victory — emphasizing that it doesn’t change Idaho law and reaffirms that the state constitution doesn’t contain a right to abortion.

The ruling could enable people like Desi to get care in Idaho, but it’s unclear how it will work in practice or if there will be other legal challenges. And it continues leaving behind many patients whose pregnancy complications don’t threaten their own lives, even if the pregnancy is doomed.

As doctors are left making critical, time-sensitive decisions about whether they feel safe providing abortions under state law, the Trump administration and the Idaho Attorney General’s Office continue pushing against the limited protections that Idaho providers have when caring for patients who might need emergency abortions.

“When these states say, ‘Well, there is an exemption for the mother’s life,’ what people don’t understand is that that is in such absolute, extreme conditions,” said Morgan Ballis, Desi’s husband and the sheriff of Blaine County in central Idaho. “But even in some of those cases, those women get turned away. So it is an absolute lie. It is completely false.”

Prayers, pregnancy and politics

The pregnancy had felt like a miracle. After more than two years of praying and trying without success, Desi and Morgan accepted that they wouldn’t have a third child, they said. A few months later, Desi found out she was expecting.

They wanted their baby’s gender to be a surprise, but Desi had a feeling deep down that it was a boy. They’d even picked out the name: Tucker Finn.

“We had just always said, if it’s a boy, ‘Is this our Tucker?’” Desi said. “It was just kind of this unspoken thing.”

They’d heard from friends that it was fun to do the 20-week ultrasound in Boise, where they could see their baby on a big screen. So they made a day of it, driving two and a half hours west from Hailey, the town of about 10,000 people where they’ve lived since 2020, following Morgan’s 11 years in the Marine Corps and a few more years in California. The Ballises quickly found a foothold within the tight-knit central Idaho town, Desi as an educator in Blaine County and Morgan as a school resource officer with the Hailey Police Department.

“It’s just this amazing, wonderful community where your friends, your neighbors, everyone becomes like family. Everyone looks out for everyone,” Morgan said.

Blaine County, a haven for outdoor enthusiasts known for its Sun Valley ski resort, is a longstanding Democratic island in a staunchly Republican state. It was one of only two Idaho counties to go blue in the 2024 presidential election, with Democrats representing 30% of the county’s registered voters compared to 12% statewide, according to the Idaho Secretary of State.

Although Desi and Morgan both grew up in Republican families, Desi wasn’t very politically involved, she said. Her Christian faith, not politics, formed the backbone of her values. But she never had a hard line on abortion.

“I’ve always just felt that as a Christian, my only job is to love on others,” Desi said. “God gave us free will, and God gave us the ability to choose, and my belief system doesn’t get to take away that choice of someone else.”

Morgan said that if he’d had to describe himself as “pro-life” or “pro-choice” before 2024, he likely would’ve landed on “pro-life.” He understood abortion as a decision that people make voluntarily.

“I didn’t know anything about all the medical nuances,” he said. “The honest answer is, I was just ignorant.”

When Desi got the call from the Utah doctor that February day in Boise, they didn’t have time to reflect on the word “abortion.” Everything became a mad dash to get to Salt Lake City as soon as possible. How would they get the kids to school? Could they both get time off work? Find a hotel? Pay for medical expenses and gas to cover the 10-hour round trip drive?

The next morning, Morgan’s dad was on his way from Arizona to watch the kids and Desi’s suitcase was packed.

Desi and Morgan left Hailey in Morgan’s pickup truck around 8 a.m., they said. They didn’t know what the doctors in Utah would tell them, but they knew that their baby was dying and they were running out of time. A few minutes into the drive, Morgan pulled over for coffee and took out an envelope that they’d gotten at the ultrasound the day before. The baby’s gender was folded inside.

They hadn’t planned on touching the envelope. But now, Morgan told Desi that he had to know. He wanted to call his child by name, to know who they were praying for. They looked at the paper together, confirming what Desi already felt deep in her heart.

“It’s Tucker,” she said.

Morgan felt struck by a wave of anger.

“Essentially, everyone in the house wanted a little brother,” he said.

He remembers getting out of the truck and punching the cover on his truck bed. Then he returned to the driver’s seat, wiped away his tears and got back on the road.

Salt Lake

On the same day that the Ballises fled to Utah, the Idaho Attorney General’s Office took the Biden administration to the Supreme Court. The office asked the court to stop the federal government from overriding its abortion ban, arguing that Idaho law is consistent with federal requirements to provide stabilizing treatment for patients in medical emergencies.

“My office has been equally clear in all our filings in court: if a doctor believes in good faith that the termination of a woman’s pregnancy is necessary to save her life — regardless of how imminent that risk is — Idaho law allows it,” Attorney General Labrador wrote in an opinion article for the Idaho Statesman last year.

Idaho obstetrician gynecologists, however, have described instances where patients’ pregnancy complications could have led to kidney failure, stroke, sepsis, heart failure and other grave conditions if left untreated.

“In some cases, these conditions can and do cause death,” wrote Stacy Seyb, an Idaho OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist, in a declaration to federal court. “And often, it will simply not be possible for a physician to determine whether termination is necessary to prevent her death as opposed to some severe harm to the patient short of death.”

Still, the Idaho Attorney General’s Office continued asserting that both state and federal law share the same goal: to save lives.

“The reality is that our law is very clear. It protects doctors, it protects women, it protects unborn children,” Labrador said in a press conference after a Supreme Court hearing in April 2024. “It’s really hard for me to conceive of a single instance where a woman has to be airlifted out of Idaho to perform an abortion.”

After four hours of driving through mountain passes and farmland, Desi and Morgan arrived at the hospital in Salt Lake City. A team of doctors met them in the lobby and performed another myriad of tests, they said.

In Desi’s case, the complications were caused by parvovirus B19, her medical records show, an infection that she’d likely contracted during her work with children. The virus is usually harmless, even in pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — but in rare cases like Desi’s, it can lead to severe fetal anemia. If she remained pregnant, she ran the risk of developing mirror syndrome, a potentially life-threatening condition where a pregnant person’s symptoms mirror those of the fetus.

Abortion was the medical treatment that she needed. The doctor cautioned that if they returned home without terminating the pregnancy, they would likely end up right back in Utah anyway, possibly in an emergency flight, Desi recalled.

Desi felt like she didn’t have a choice. “It was, die with your son or don’t die,” she said.

Then the doctor delivered more bad news: Neither of their employer-sponsored health insurance plans would cover the hospital stay. Idaho law prohibits most private and public insurance plans from covering abortions. Their insurance with the Department of Veterans Affairs — which Desi gets through Morgan, a combat veteran who’s permanently disabled from his service — didn’t cover it either, as that plan only pays for abortions in certain specific circumstances.

“We were quoted $25,000 to $35,000 just for the hospital stay. That wasn’t the procedure, that wasn’t anesthesia, that wasn’t anything else,” Desi said. “I just remember panicking because I was like, ‘Where am I supposed to go?’”

It wasn’t until the next afternoon, a Wednesday, that they finally found a clinic that would take them. The cost would be covered through a local abortion fund, an independent organization that provides financial and logistical support for people seeking abortions. But the clinic couldn’t even see them for an initial appointment for another 24 hours, Desi said. The procedure wouldn’t happen until Friday.

That’s when Desi, confronted with the loss of her son and possibly her own life, felt the bedrock of her faith begin to crumble.

“That was kind of the first time that I was thinking, ‘God, where are you in this?’” she said. “Why would you make me wait so long to get pregnant, make me feel convinced that I wasn’t going to get pregnant, and then let me get pregnant, and then have this happen to me?”

As she prayed for a miracle, Morgan prayed for direction. “God, give us something to let us know this is the right thing to do,” he said. Amid his prayers, he had a sudden realization that they weren’t alone.

“As clear as day, I can still remember it, God spoke to me and said, ‘Who knows better the pain of losing a son than God himself?’” Morgan said. “I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace that this is gonna be OK.”

That Friday, Desi — hundreds of miles from home, with her dying son still inside her — got an abortion.

‘Dying enough’

Among rapidly changing abortion laws and legal decisions throughout the country, Idaho patients’ access to medically necessary abortions continues to hang in the balance.

In September 2023, the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global legal advocacy organization, filed a lawsuit against the state of Idaho intending to broaden Idaho’s medical exceptions. Like Desi, the four Idaho mothers who brought the case had to travel out of state for abortion care after receiving diagnoses of severe and fatal fetal conditions that put their own health at risk. Also like Desi, each woman took a financial hit, racking up costs for hotels, gas, flights and procedures not covered by insurance. Desi’s trip to Utah cost her family at least $3,000 between the hotel, child care, travel costs and sending Tucker’s remains back to Idaho, her records show.

On April 11, an Idaho judge ruled on the case, finding that abortions can be performed under state law if the pregnant person’s life is at risk, even if her death isn’t imminent or assured. The ruling, while a step forward for reproductive rights advocates, continues to exclude many people in need of abortion care, including some of the mothers who brought the case, according to the center.

“It remains to be seen if this is going to provide additional reassurance or additional access to abortion care because there still remains a significant amount of gray area,” said Misa Perron-Burdick, an OB-GYN at St. Luke’s, Idaho’s largest health system. “It’s really hard to determine if a patient faces an increased risk of dying.”

As health care providers navigate these changes, a similar case is awaiting a decision in federal court. On March 5, the Trump administration dropped a lawsuit arguing that Idaho’s ban conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal law requiring Medicare-funded hospitals to provide emergency care. The suit was initially filed by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Biden administration.

Physicians, attorneys and judges have argued that in some cases, abortion is the treatment needed to stabilize a pregnant patient under this federal law. Idaho Attorney General Labrador has countered that “the notion that EMTALA requires doctors to perform abortions is absurd.”

When InvestigateWest reached out to the Idaho Attorney General’s Office, the office stood by its previous statements, arguing that there is “no conflict” between Idaho’s abortion law and federal emergency care requirements.

In anticipation of the Trump administration’s actions, St. Luke’s filed its own lawsuit against Labrador in January. A court order granted in March means that, at least for now, St. Luke’s can continue performing emergency abortions to stabilize pregnant patients.

Yet even with these protections in place, many patients will likely still need to go out of state for abortion care, Perron-Burdick said.

“The laws are confusing, and everybody is really scared,” she said. “So even if I as a provider feel comfortable providing care for a patient, does the pharmacist feel comfortable dispensing the medication? Does the anesthesia provider feel comfortable providing anesthesia? Does the nurse feel comfortable administering the medication?”

Sending pregnant patients out of Idaho can feel risky for doctors, too. Although state law doesn’t explicitly prohibit doctors from referring patients to other states for abortions, Labrador sent a letter to a Republican state representative in March 2023 claiming that it did. A federal appeals court later rejected Labrador’s interpretation of the statute, finding that prosecuting doctors for out-of-state abortion referrals violates their right to free speech.

“That letter from the attorney general just struck fear into the medical professions,” Morgan said. “Our doctor in Boise was never able to clearly state what the likely possible outcome was. He never used the word ‘abortion’ as even an option or consideration.”

Desi’s Idaho providers, through Desi, declined to talk to InvestigateWest about her case, referencing an ongoing legal battle in Indiana that could force the Indiana Department of Health to release terminated pregnancy reports to the public. The Indiana case — as well as recent criminal charges against medical providers under abortion laws in Texas and Louisiana —  have continued to raise questions about how patients’ medical records can be used to incriminate doctors.

“The reality is, there is no amount of legislation that can legislate every medical nuance,” Desi said. “Who gets to make that call? Who’s to say that I wasn’t dying enough?”

Honoring Tucker

While partisan battles over abortion play out across the country, often pitting liberal reproductive rights advocates against a conservative, faith-based opposition, families like the Ballises are living a much more complex reality.

After returning from Utah, Morgan felt called to run for Blaine County sheriff, his faith only strengthened by his loss of Tucker. A military veteran, Christian and law enforcement officer, Morgan had been a Republican nearly his whole life.

When he launched his campaign, he ran as a Democrat.

“After having to get an abortion, what it came down to for me was, the party that I had supported my entire life was the party that put us into this situation,” Morgan said. “What I saw was my faith being weaponized to put these laws in place.”

He won the November election in a landslide.

Desi also became more politically involved, advocating for women’s right to make their own medical decisions. She feels a responsibility to tell people about her experience to honor Tucker, she said.

“The need for life saving health care doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care if you are an atheist, a Christian, or where your political leaning lies,” Desi said.

When the couple began sharing their abortion story within their church community and through an Idaho nonprofit called the Pro-Voice Project, they weren’t sure how it would be received by their more conservative neighbors and friends. For some Idaho Christians, state law still doesn’t go far enough to protect the unborn. State Sen. Brandon Shippy, who describes himself as a Christian and a “true Idaho Republican,” introduced a bill in February that would allow women who get abortions to be prosecuted for murder, without exceptions for rape or incest. The bill, which didn’t move out of committee, gained over a dozen legislative co-sponsors.

But when the Ballises shared Tucker’s story, the response was “overwhelmingly positive and loving and caring,” Desi said. Women in their community have confided in her about their own abortion stories and thanked her for speaking out.

“That’s what’s been so eye-opening, even in my Christian community,” she said. “Having these conversations and having people say, ‘Whoa, you’re right. It’s not black and white.’”

This story was originally published by InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to change-making investigative journalism. Sign up for their Watchdog Weekly newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.