Women who pursued Idaho abortion lawsuit accuse anti-abortion website of libel

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Three women who were at the center of an Idaho lawsuit about abortion are part of another potential legal action after abortion rights advocates say they and several other women across the U.S. were repeatedly defamed by an anti-abortion news site that painted their procedures as unnecessary.

Kayla Smith, Jennifer Adkins and Jillaine St. Michel are among 13 people named in a letter sent by Amplify Legal last week to anti-abortion organization Live Action and its news arm, Live Action News. The letter demands the organization’s founder and news site’s assistant editor remove false and libelous statements about abortions several women had after learning their babies had been diagnosed with fatal fetal conditions.

Amplify Legal is the legal arm of Abortion in America, an abortion rights advocacy nonprofit that says it amplifies the voices of people affected by abortion bans in an effort to increase access to abortion.

Molly Duane, an Amplify Legal attorney representing the women named in the letter, told the Idaho Statesman in an interview that Live Action News has written numerous articles about her clients that misconstrue the circumstances of their abortions. Duane said the articles started shortly after women began sharing the impacts abortion bans had on them.

“We started seeing pretty immediately Live Action was writing these articles that they label as fact checks where they say, despite all evidence to the contrary, that this was a baby that could have survived, and that this family killed their wanted child,” Duane said. “That is just cruelty on top of cruelty.”

Live Action did not respond to a request for comment.

Women from Idaho abortion case accused of ‘eugenic motives,’ ‘lethal injection’

Smith, Adkins, St. Michel and a fourth plaintiff, Rebecca Vincen-Brown, sued Idaho in 2023 after they said they were forced to leave the state for abortions because of Idaho’s restrictive abortion laws.

In April 2025, Fourth Judicial District Judge Jason Scott ruled partially in favor of the women when he clarified that state law allows doctors to perform abortions when continuing a pregnancy makes an existing condition or pregnancy complication unsafe. Scott stopped short of declaring state abortion bans a violation of pregnant people’s equal rights, among other claims.

According to the lawsuit and her court testimony, Smith was pregnant in 2022 with a boy named Brooks when an anatomy scan at 19 weeks revealed the baby had multiple structural heart defects. The Smiths were unable to find a pediatric cardiologist willing to operate on their son. The family needed a $16,000 loan to travel to Washington for an abortion, where Smith went through labor and delivered a stillborn baby.

In an interview, Smith described the pregnancy as a “sh-t buffet, because I didn’t feel like I had a choice. If I stayed pregnant, then I could eventually develop preeclampsia,” she said. But her maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Idaho was unsure how sick Smith would need to be to legally be allowed an abortion in Idaho, and Brooks’ heart defects were what some pediatric cardiologists called the worst case they had seen.

The Smiths later moved to Washington and, in March 2024, Sen. Patty Murray brought Smith to Washington, D.C., as her guest for then-President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address. Smith told the Statesman she and her husband were on the plane home after the speech when she saw a Live Action News article about her.

Smith said she was feeling like her son’s life had meaning — helping other women and families who may be afraid to speak out.

“We were on this high of like, ‘Wow, we’re doing something really cool, and turning like this horrific tragedy that we had to go through into a positive thing to help other people,’” Smith recalled. “And then we see this horrific thing come across our screen like, ‘Their babies had disabilities, so they decided to flee the state to kill them.’ So basically saying that we’re murderers.”

According to Amplify Legal’s letter, articles in Live Action News described Brooks’ condition as “operable” and Smith’s abortion as “not medically necessary.”

Amplify Legal said the anti-abortion website “claimed that a ‘feticide’ was injected into Ms. Smith’s baby, using that fabrication to declare he died ‘by lethal injection in the name of pro‑abortion propaganda.’ ”

Live Action News made similar claims about St. Michel and Adkins, according to the letter, the latter of whom Live Action News accused of “eugenic motives” for abortion. Adkins’ husband, John, is also one of the 13 people represented by Amplify Legal.

Letter says defamation led to death threats

Smith told the Statesman she expected pushback about her decision to have an abortion, especially while living in Idaho. But she called the disinformation “an insult to injury.”

“If you’re gonna say things and have an opinion about what I did, then at least make sure that it’s factual information and not something made up,” Smith said. “And that’s exactly what (Live Action) did. They just made up a bunch of stuff.”

Smith said she personally knows people who take Live Action News articles as fact, so she felt compelled to speak out about the statements made about her case and others’.

Amplify Legal’s letter says one of its clients — a woman from Texas named Kate Cox — was defamed by Live Action News dozens of times. Duane told the Statesman that social media comments on articles about her clients include death threats toward the families involved.

The letter demands that Live Action stop publishing false statements about Amplify Legal’s clients and correct any “libelous” articles that have already been published. The organization gave Live Action until July 28 to comply before it pursues potential further legal action.

Duane said Amplify Legal had not received a response from Live Action as of Monday morning.