Idaho Capital Sun – Idaho lost more than a third of its practicing obstetrician doctors after the state’s near-total abortion ban took effect, a new study published in a peer-reviewed academic journal confirms.
The study—published July 31 in the JAMA Network Open, a division of the Journal of the American Medical Association—found that Idaho lost 35 percent of its doctors who practiced in obstetrics.
In total, Idaho lost 94 of those doctors out of 268 between August 2022 and December 2024, the study found.
Idaho’s abortion ban took effect in 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned national abortion protections [sic].
Some OB-GYNs, including maternal-fetal medicine specialists, said publicly that they were leaving because of the ban.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Edward McEachern, said in a statement:
“These results provide a stark picture of a rapidly declining maternal health workforce in our state.”
The study appears to confirm findings from a report in February 2024 by the Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative that found Idaho lost 22 percent of its practicing obstetricians since the state’s abortion bans took effect …
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
RELATED:
Pro-abortion activists pursue ballot initiative to override Idaho’s pro-life laws
Abortion advocates in Idaho hope to sidestep the legislature and gut pro-life protections with a ballot initiative to enact a new legalization statute directly.
Calvin Freiburger, Jul 12, 2025
(LifeSiteNews) – Pro-abortion activists are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to legalize abortion-on-demand in Idaho, incensed by state lawmakers’ refusal to appease their demands to weaken the state’s pro-life laws.
Most abortions are illegal throughout pregnancy in Idaho, with a trigger ban starting at conception and civil liability law starting at six weeks. Exceptions are permitted for rape, incest, or when allegedly necessary to save a mother’s life. In January 2023, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld the bans and ruled that the Idaho Constitution does not contain a “right” to abortion.
In response, a group calling itself Idahoans United for Women and Families is circulating a ballot initiative to enact a new statute, the “Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act” (RFPA), that would codify a “right to reproductive freedom and privacy, which is the right to make personal decisions about reproductive health care that directly impact the person’s own body,” expressly including abortion.
In an apparent play for the support of moderates, the initiative allows the state to “regulate” abortion after fetal viability “except in cases of medical emergency” and states that it “does not create a financial obligation on the state, its agencies, or their programs to pay for, fund, or subsidize the reproductive health care protected by this act.”
Regarding the former assurance, however, health exceptions are commonly designed as loopholes meant to authorize abortionists to rationalize any abortion.
In Roe v. Wade’s companion ruling Doe v. Bolton, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote that “health” had to be understood to mean not only concrete medical complications but factors such as “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age.”
If the initiative makes it to the ballot, it would only require a majority vote to be ratified, though reaching that point is a challenge only three other efforts have achieved in the last decade, according to the Idaho Capital Sun …
