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Q&A: Who’s Fighting for Abortion Rights in Idaho? [1]
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Date: 2024-07-12
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Jen Jackson Quintano is a writer, arborist, and abortion rights advocate located in the north Idaho small town of Sandpoint. Jackson Quintano founded her organization, The Pro-Voice Project, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade in the summer of 2022, allowing Idaho’s restrictive abortion ban to take effect. (On June 27, the Supreme Court issued a very limited decision affirming the rights of Idaho women to receive abortion care in emergency situations.)
Enjoy our conversation about the two years that have followed, and how to get involved in the struggle for reproductive rights in Idaho, below.
Sign outside a Pro-Voice Project storytelling event (images provided by Jackson Quintano).
Olivia Weeks, The Daily Yonder: Tell me about yourself! Where are you from, what do you do?
Jen Jackson Quintano: My name is Jen Jackson Quintano. I currently live in Sandpoint, Idaho, which, geographically, is basically Canada. Just with fewer caribou and more guns. I’ve been here for about a dozen years now, the final leg on my Tour of the Most Conservative States in the American West, having lived in Utah, Wyoming and South Dakota before this.
In North Idaho, I own an arborist business with my husband, which means that our love of trees has been monetized through the killing of trees. Chainsaws and chippers dominate our days. Or, they dominated mine until recently. Now, all my available time is spent advocating for reproductive rights in rural Idaho.
In the wake of the Dobbs decision, I started an organization called The Pro-Voice Project which leans heavily on storytelling, education, and community conversations to destigmatize discussion of abortion so people can more fully embrace and advocate for access to it. Our events – especially our abortion story stage productions and writing workshops – help people understand and empathize with the abortion journey, while also learning of the broader impacts of legislating abortion. The ripple effects spread far wider than abortion access. Here in Idaho, we’ve lost a quarter of our reproductive healthcare providers and have seen three obstetrics units close due to the untenability of working as a physician in an abortion-resitricted state. We are in the midst of a healthcare crisis.
In a conservative, largely rural state like Idaho, I think it’s essential to start on the ground floor with a topic like this. People here aren’t even comfortable saying “vagina” in front of their daughters, let alone the word “abortion” in mixed company. The things we’re not talking about, we’re not fighting for, and so I’m sparking a necessary conversation. Beyond performances and workshops, I also offer traveling exhibits on reproductive healthcare access and moderated community conversations. I cultivate national media coverage so Idaho voices and struggles are elevated, and I’ve been distributing “Abortion is Healthcare” yard signs throughout the state, getting people more comfortable stating the obvious, for all the world to see.
We can argue pro-life versus pro-choice til the cows come home. But there are openings for empathy and understanding in sharing our stories and receiving those of others. It’s hard to argue with vulnerability.
DY: Polls have found that many rural people oppose restrictive abortion laws like the one in place in Idaho. In light of that, did you experience any discomfort at The Guardian calling you “north Idaho’s lone abortion rights organizer”?
JJQ: Yes, at first I felt uncomfortable being identified as the one-and-only; such distinctions rarely hold up. And in the months since the article came out, Planned Parenthood has installed an organizer about 150 miles south of Sandpoint, in Moscow. Also, Bans Off Moscow has recently revived some of its advocacy work. Yet, for the past 18 months, The Pro-Voice Project has been the only active, full-time organizing presence for reproductive rights in this region. Which is part of why I started PVP. Jen Jackson Quintano also works as an arborist.
After Dobbs, I think we all had the sense that, “Someone’s on top of this, right?” We all looked around assuming that someone was waiting in the wings, ready to counterattack. But the truth was, no one was lying in wait. No superhero was ready to save the day. Especially in a place like North Idaho. I heard nothing but crickets. So I took up the reins. And it’s been a wild ride.
There is support for the cause in rural Idaho, absolutely, but that doesn’t mean folks are quitting their jobs to organize the masses and make change. Largely, they’re at home feeling pissed off or scared or defeated. When I started PVP, there was nowhere to go with those feelings, which is how a fledgling organization in a town of 10,000 attracted 600 attendees to its first two events. People were hungry for leadership and direction on this issue. It’s also how I found PBS NewsHour, The Today Show, MSNBC, and other news outlets knocking on my door in those early days, as I was trying to get my feet under me. I wasn’t necessarily qualified to speak to those media outlets about reproductive health at the time, but I was the only person in the area saying the word “abortion” publicly, and that’s how the reporters found me.
There are other advocacy groups elsewhere in Idaho working on reproductive rights – Idaho Abortion Rights and the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare are great examples – but they are largely based out of Boise, which is an eight-hour drive from Sandpoint. We might as well be in different states. A vast and roadless wilderness stands between us. North Idaho, which often feels neglected by the state capital anyway, needed its own organizer. So here I am. Finding that, as you point out, many rural residents support abortion access. I am not alone on that front. I’m just the only one who was willing to blow up her life and work unpaid for several years to champion the cause.
In the past 18 months, I’ve attracted a robust group of dedicated, intelligent, passionate and active volunteers. None of this work would be possible without them. I may be alone in the office every day, but I’m not alone in this fight.
DY: Were you much of an activist before Roe was overturned?
JJQ: Prior to running the arborist business, I spent time working in the wilderness movement. I also organized against a nuclear power plant along the Green River in Utah. Land use and the environment used to be my jam, especially in Utah, which was a landscape I loved with all my heart. It felt imperative to protect it somehow. However, that was long ago, and I thought I’d left my activist days behind me, especially after departing from Utah. I mean, my god, I transitioned from the environmental movement to killing trees. My twenty-something self would have wept had she known what lay ahead.
It turns out, though, that the activist urge was dormant, just waiting for the necessary heat to reignite it. The heat used to be my passion for place. Now it’s my fire for women’s agency, autonomy, and the ability to fully consent to any given use of their bodies.
DY: Was there community outrage when your local hospital closed its maternity ward? Did that prompt any new reflection or action from you on the intersection of rural healthcare shortages and restrictive abortion laws?
JJQ: Yes. Absolutely. Outrage, and also confusion and grief. Our maternity ward had been around for nearly 75 years. Generations of North Idahoans were born there. This was an enormous loss. It was also a poorly articulated loss. Little information – beyond the initial press release announcing the imminent closure – emerged from the hospital. No one knew what lay ahead. It was all speculation. Some pregnant women showed up for prenatal appointments and weren’t even told that the next one wouldn’t happen. The hospital inadvertently ignited a shit storm by mentioning Idaho’s “political climate” as one of the reasons for the closure, which was like blood in the water for the media sharks. As reporters circled, Bonner General went to ground, which protected them from overwhelm but left our community at a loss for how to deal with the closure. In the absence of information, people began blaming the hospital, directing their outrage at the institution rather than the political, demographic and financial winds battering it.
After news of the closure, I organized an “Unhappy Hour” with the owner of a local brewery so the community could collectively mourn the loss of all OBGYN services. We knew that people needed a place to bring their emotions, so we provided the container. Over 400 people showed up. So did multiple media outlets. The thing about the crowd, though, was that it was politically diverse. Everyone, no matter their party affiliation, is impacted by the loss of healthcare providers. Everyone is appalled when they lose the ability to safely welcome babies into the community.
This was a moment wherein the politics of abortion, which has a reputation for being hot-button and divisive (though polling shows that it’s not as divisive as we tend to believe), hit Main Street for us and impacted everyone. It didn’t matter if someone considered themselves pro-life; they could now see how legislating those beliefs might have a negative impact on families and communities. Suddenly, people who were previously unwilling to talk about abortion were now willing to address the impacts of banning it, how that was driving physicians away, how “pro-life” laws might actually make life more fraught and dangerous. It opened the door to conversations about reproductive healthcare with a much larger swath of the community.
It’s true that rural healthcare – especially obstetrics – is a house of cards. It’s true that there were more factors at play in the maternity ward closure than just the political. However, our house of cards stood for 75 years; it was only after politics entered the exam room – and the standard of care in certain situations was criminalized – that we saw the edifice fall. We’ve lost all four of our OBGYNs. That means that more than pregnancy and childbirth are affected. People are having to travel for hysterectomies and menopause treatment, pessary checks and care for uterine prolapse. This affects all ages.
I think awareness of the intersection between abortion bans and rural healthcare was evident in our recent primary elections wherein our abortion abolitionist state senator was ousted by a former legislator who, though he voted for our abortion bans years ago, is now making women’s healthcare a central plank of his campaign. He’s still staunchly pro-life, but he admits that his votes were shortsighted and that something needs to change to support physicians and women in our state. He and I will likely never see eye-to-eye on abortion, but we respect one another. He regularly attends Pro-Voice events to learn from the women present. He knows my abortion story and my rape story and my abuse story. He knows exactly why I do this work.
Such conversation and connections are necessary in staunchly red states like Idaho. Yes, I’m angry about the laws we have on the books – how they are harming women, how they are legislating shame – and that anger drives my work. But in small communities like mine, civility is also important. Listening to one another. Maintaining an awareness of the art of the possible even as we shoot for the moon.
DY: How can Idahoans who want to help you fight the abortion ban get involved?
JJQ: Oh gosh, where to begin? There’s always a need for funding for these efforts. As I said, I’ve been doing this for free, but I refuse to give up, and there’s so much powerful PVP programming that deserves the necessary financial support.
I’m always looking for new communities willing to bring an abortion story stage production or writing workshop to town. We have five more stage productions planned for 2024, and I want to fill the calendar for 2025. PVP also has a traveling artistic and educational exhibit called “Worth of a Woman” that explores the barriers to and undervaluing of reproductive healthcare. We’ve had it up in public spaces like bakeries and breweries, and we’re looking to bring the conversation to more towns around Idaho. The exhibit comes replete with a template on how to organize community conversation on the subject, in order to deepen engagement.
I’m always looking for people to share their abortion stories to add to our library, especially those with experiences from the post-Roe era. Such stories are used anonymously in stage productions and outreach campaigns to help people understand, via lived experiences, how harmful our abortion bans are. PVP is also in need of volunteers and people willing to be ambassadors for abortion storytelling, education and advocacy in their own communities.
Or Idahoans can simply attend the next PVP event in their area. Our programming has a ripple effect, and people can be a part of that. One stage production led to a community’s political leader moving from counseling candidates to never mention the word “abortion” to now making it central to her organizing. Countless others have been moved to share abortion stories – with me, with their families – that they’ve held silent for decades. A Methodist minister who attended one performance took to heart my admonition to openly talk about abortion. She is now preaching about it to small congregations across southern Idaho, reminding parishioners that Jesus, in the scriptures, was a healer, willing to break rules to minister to those in need. If he were to manifest today, she asks, would he appear as a physician in Idaho? One who might be willing to provide abortion care to protect the lives and futures of women in need?
Ultimately, the hope is to launch a ballot initiative campaign for 2026 wherein Idahoans will have the final say. I want that final say to come from a place of empathy and awareness. A place free of stigma and shame. My hope is that storytelling and community conversation will get us there.
To learn more, people can go to www.theprovoiceproject.com or www.worthofawomanidaho.com.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox. By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.
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