August 8, 2026
Cleaning Out Dad’s Office: The “Key” to Triaging Prop 1
By: Julianne Young
This week has been bittersweet. In preparation for a staycation family reunion, I took on the task of cleaning out my dad’s office. Dad passed away suddenly from an aggressive cancer a little over two years ago, and his office has sat largely untouched since. Displayed on one desk door was a sticky note listing the 2024 Scout campouts he’d planned. He maintained his medical license even after retirement, made home visits, performed disability physicals, and had a finger in half a dozen home businesses — acting as billing office, secretary, packer, and postal clerk. His was a life full of service and adventure, and his office was still bursting with it.
Two years later, one small pile on his desk was clearly prepared to teach his beloved Scouts how to handle emergencies — complete with First Aid triage instructions and a foldable paper quiz game. Dad didn’t just teach preparedness — he lived it. In the file cabinet were drawers full of maps: every corner of Idaho and Oregon, even remote South America, where he’d served missions. Dad understood “preparation” meant having the right information on hand, and in an age when adventures were planned with paper maps rather than online ratings, Dad was the man with the plan.
As I pulled map after map from that drawer, I noticed that every map had its own scale and key. Understanding that scale and key makes all the difference — whether you’re planning an adventure or facing an emergency.
Recently I wrote about a Boise doctor who didn’t read or understand Idaho law and placed patients at risk through irrational care decisions. Some commenters suggested I was ill-equipped to weigh in as a “non-medical” person. The irony: we were discussing a legal argument, and the commenter, like the doctor, was the one misunderstanding the legal definitions. The exchange did highlight something real: some confusion surrounding Prop 1 is exacerbated by the fact that key terms mean different things in medical billing than they do in law. Failing to use the right definitions in the right context can result in a badly botched vacation, political opinion, or medical treatment.
The word “abortion” is an easy case in point. In medical billing, any termination of a pregnancy prior to 20 weeks is coded as an “abortion” — including treatment for a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy. Idaho’s prolife law defines “abortion” differently, excluding care for a miscarriage, a baby who has passed away, or life-threatening conditions like an ectopic or molar pregnancy. It also excludes early delivery when medically necessary for a life-threatening condition, so long as the doctor maximizes the baby’s chance of survival too, whenever possible. The law doesn’t require doctors to guarantee outcomes; it prohibits deliberately killing the baby. These are not minor technicalities. They are the legal scale and key by which the entire map should be read.
Nuances around the term “viability” are equally important to understanding the implications of Proposition 1, which will be on the November ballot. Traditionally, we think of a “viable” baby as one who could survive with NICU care. Yet, Prop 1 defines “viability” as the point when a baby can be born and survive without extraordinary medical measures. Because of this, Prop 1 legalizes abortion by any method, for any reason, well into the third trimester of pregnancy.
Some seem confused by the scale of the abortion question — arguing that third-trimester elective abortions don’t exist. Even if we set aside the second trimester abortions, where babies are dismembered and removed with forceps, and we accept the claim that only 1% of abortions are elective third-trimester abortions, 1% of 66 million abortions performed since Roe is still 600,000 babies — babies deliberately killed at a point when they’re indisputably capable of surviving and feeling pain. For perspective, COVID caused roughly 3,000 deaths in its first month, and the country was paralyzed. The death of 600,000 babies through elective abortion in the third trimester should never be minimized, normalized, or legalized.
The most important “key” in the Prop 1 discussion isn’t for the public to master medical terminology. It’s for all of us to understand the relevant legal definitions that tell us how Prop 1 will affect Idaho for generations to come. Whether it’s “abortion,” “viability,” or the real scale of “elective” abortions, getting these facts wrong is not harmless. It’s a triage error — and in law, as in an emergency, misreading a situation can cost more than time. A misread map is as dangerous as no map at all. Tens of thousands of lives are on the line.
