abortion-rights advocates in Idaho are ramping up for a ballot initiative campaign in 2026 to overturn the state’s anti-abortion law, one of the strictest in the country.
Idahoans United for Women and Families announced last week that it has collected more than 50,000 signatures to place a measure on the ballot next November to overturn the state’s prohibition on abortion for all 40 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape and incest.
The group told state news outlet the Idaho Capital Sun that it plans to use Small Business Saturday following the Thanksgiving holiday to host its largest signature collection event, hoping to reach the 71,000-signature threshold to get on the 2026 ballot.
“Crossing the 50,000 signature threshold is both a celebration and a clear signal that Idahoans want their voices heard,” Idahoans United for Women and Families’ Executive Director Melanie Folwell said in a statement. “Every signature is a reminder that these decisions belong with patients and their doctors, not with politicians.”
The ballot measure, titled the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, “established a right to make private reproductive healthcare decisions, including abortion up to fetal viability and in medical emergencies.”
The measure also includes within the definition of the term “reproductive healthcare” any childbirth care, contraception, fertility treatment, and miscarriage care, as well as prenatal, pregnancy, and postpartum care.
Idaho’s current anti-abortion law has been a focal point in the nationwide abortion debate following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which made abortion policy a state-by-state issue.
The Gem State’s Defense of Life Act took immediate effect following the overturning of Roe. It was targeted by the Biden administration, which argued that tight prohibitions on abortion violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals to treat patients with stabilizing care regardless of their ability to pay.
The Supreme Court last year found that the state’s anti-abortion law does not prevent Idaho physicians from performing abortions in emergency circumstances to save a mother’s life, nor does it hinder miscarriage care.
WHAT THIS SUPREME COURT RULING MEANS FOR IDAHO’S PRO-LIFE LAW
But opponents of Idaho’s current statute contend that the anti-abortion law and corresponding legal confusion about its implementation have sparked an exodus of physicians from the state, exacerbating Idaho’s underlying rural health challenges.
A study published in October from researchers at Boise State University found that Idaho lost roughly 35% of practicing obstetricians, or 94 of its total 268 OB/GYNs, between August 2022 and December 2024. Over the two-year study period, 20 new OB/GYNs moved to Idaho, and 114 obstetricians stopped practicing medicine, left their practices, or moved to a different state.
Last year, research from the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare and Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative, both of which are opposed to the state’s abortion restrictions, found that the state lost about 22% of its obstetricians between August 2022 and November 2023.
But the problem of doctors leaving states with anti-abortion laws, such as Idaho, might be overblown.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this spring found that there were “no significant differences in trends in OBGYN’s practice locations across states with different abortion-related policy environments” between 2018 and 2024.
On the national stage, abortion is likely to be less of a motivating issue in the 2026 midterm elections than it was in either the 2022 midterm elections or the 2024 presidential election, considering that the dust has settled slightly since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Decision in 2022 that overturned Roe.
Abortion-related ballot initiatives since the Dobbs decision have tended to favor abortion-rights advocates, but three abortion-restricting ballot amendments were passed by voters in 2024.
Kelsey Pritchard, state affairs director for the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told the Washington Examiner that anti-abortion Idahoans need to learn from the 2024 playbook if they are going to be successful.
“The pro-life states that have defeated pro-abortion ballot measures provide the road map for Idaho,” said Pritchard. “Pro-life leaders in Idaho must build an effective coalition as Florida, South Dakota, and Nebraska did early on that can raise enough money to run a winning campaign.”
NEW JERSEY TO OPEN ITS FIRST ‘ALL-TRIMESTER’ ABORTION CLINIC
Pritchard also said that high-profile GOP leaders in Idaho will have to take a strong stance against the ballot initiative, as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) did. Anti-abortion advocates argue that political support is necessary to galvanize a movement to thwart abortion-rights ballot initiatives.
SBA announced earlier this month that it launched an $80 million investment in the 2026 House and Senate races across several battleground states, including Iowa, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina. It’s unclear whether SBA will be involved in opposing the Idaho abortion-rights ballot initiative.
