Idaho voters will decide on Tuesday whether to approve Idaho Prop 1, the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act initiative that would allow abortion up to fetal viability. If it passes, the measure would replace a near-total ban with a broader right to end a pregnancy before viability, while keeping later abortions limited to medical emergencies.
The vote arrives after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling removed the constitutional right to abortion and helped trigger Idaho’s current law, one of the most restrictive in the United States. The initiative drew more than 110,000 signatures, far above the 70,725 needed to qualify, and it now asks voters to decide whether reproductive health decisions should be treated as private matters between a patient and a health care provider.
For Dr. Anne Feighner, the ballot question is not abstract. She said at least seven patients with fatal fetal anomalies had to leave Idaho after the 2022 ruling to get care elsewhere. Those cases, she said, captured what the state’s restrictions now mean for people facing the worst possible diagnosis in a pregnancy: even when a pregnancy cannot continue, care may still be out of reach at home.
Idaho’s current law makes abortion illegal unless it is necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman. It also allows abortions in cases of rape or incest only during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and only if a copy of a law enforcement report is shown to the physician. A woman who has an abortion is exempt from criminal prosecution, but medical professionals are not. A physician convicted of performing or assisting an illegal abortion could face two to five years in prison and lose a medical license for at least six months.
Feighner said the fear set in quickly when Idaho’s trigger ban took effect in 2022. She said there were no exclusions for ectopic pregnancies or molar pregnancies under that ban, and she said she initially wondered whether she could keep working under those conditions. But she also said the need has only become clearer. “Now, I see so much need here to care for my patients that I’m not sure I could leave them,” she said.
That is the choice facing voters on Tuesday: keep a law that doctors say has already pushed some patients out of Idaho, or approve a measure that would allow abortion up to fetal viability and shift the legal risk away from providers. The outcome will tell whether Idaho continues one of the nation’s tightest abortion regimes or opens the door to a narrower, earlier path to care.
