Voters in Idaho, one of the country’s most conservative states, turned back an effort to repeal the state’s abortion ban, according to The Associated Press.
Two years before the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, Idaho lawmakers had already passed a ban, making it a crime for doctors or other health care professionals to terminate a pregnancy. The law went into effect when the high court reversed itself on Roe v. Wade.
Since then, in-person abortions have nearly vanished in Idaho, but the state has also experienced a dramatic drop in the number of doctors practicing obstetrics. A study published last year found that Idaho had lost 94 of the 268 physicians who were practicing obstetrics when the ban took effect, a 35 percent decline in the first two years, even after accounting for doctors who had arrived in the state over that time. About half of Idaho’s 44 counties lack a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist.
Proponents of repealing the ban argued that the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature had gone too far with a law that led to long wait times and fear among the doctors who have stayed. They hoped that Idaho would join Kansas and Missouri, other conservative states where voters have rolled back abortion limits.
Conservatives and the Idaho Republican Party made maintaining the ban their big issue and used it to drive voter turnout. They said the statistics about doctors fleeing the state were overblown, noting the number of people with active obstetrician and gynecologist licenses in Idaho grew since the abortion ban. Doctors do not need to live or practice full time in the state to maintain one, and not all OB-GYN practices offer a full range of women’s health care.
Opponents of the referendum also focused on aspects of the measure that went beyond abortion. The proposition would have also enshrined a right to birth control and fertility treatments in Idaho.
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