On July 2, volunteers pass boxes full of signed ballot petitions through the Idaho Capitol. If approved on the November ballot and subsequently by voters, the proposed Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act would restore access to abortion “without government interference” until fetal viability is restored and would protect infertility treatment and other reproductive protections, such as contraception. (Photo: Kelcie Moseley-Morris/Stateline)
BOISE, Idaho – Suzanne Gallus is a Catholic mother of seven who has been pregnant 12 times. For the past year, she has been asking residents to sign a petition to aid restore access to abortion in one of Idaho’s most conservative areas.
At a July 2 event at the Idaho Capitol, Gallus told a crowd of other volunteers and supporters that while knocking on doors in northern Idaho, she spoke to about 400 people and learned that even those who personally believed strongly against abortion were willing to sign up and vote yes.
“People have always been very open with a lot of stories, and maybe not at all about them,” Gallus later told Stateline. “It might have been about a niece or a cousin or their grandmother, but not all of them were abortion stories. A lot of them were about adoption or infertility.”
Despite Idaho’s status as a deeply conservative state — President Donald Trump won it by nearly 37 percentage points in 2024 — an estimated one-quarter, or 28%, of the more than 110,000 signatures collected by the group spearheading the proposed reproductive freedom and privacy bill come from registered Republicans.
According to campaign data, more than 33% of signatories are unaffiliated voters, 37% are Democrats and about 1% are Libertarians. Those shares could be higher or lower after the Idaho Secretary of State’s office approves the petition to put the proposal on the November ballot.
Idaho Initiativewhich would restore access to abortion “without government interference” for as long as the fetus is viable and protect fertility treatments and other forms of reproductive care such as contraception, is one of three abortion-related measures scheduled to be on the state ballot in November. A elementary majority is required for adoption. The state allows residents to submit proposals for laws, but not changes to the constitution.
In Nevada, voters will be asked to confirm an abortion rights initiative they passed as early as 2024, which is required by state law. Virginia voters will be asked to approve a measure proposed by the legislature that would add the right to reproductive freedom to the state constitution.
Two other ballot initiatives in Colorado and Missouri banned abortion rather than restoring access. The Missouri Legislature returned to the issue after voters narrowly approved an amendment in 2024 establishing a right to abortion until fetal viability. This year, lawmakers put a bill on the November ballot that would again ban abortion as well as gender-affirming health care for minors.
Colorado’s initiative to eliminate the state’s constitutional right to abortion has not yet officially qualified for the ballot.
Republican signatures
Gallus, an Idaho State volunteer, lives in Rathdrum, a town of fewer than 10,000 people north of more populated Coeur d’Alene, where leaders of the local Kootenai County Republican Central Committee helped move the state party continue to the right over the last decade. North Idaho delegates were among those in 2022 I voted down a proposed amendment to the Idaho Republican Party platform to allow abortion to save a pregnant woman’s life.
In overdue June, a local conservative blogger published a list of the names of more than 4,000 Kootenai County petition signers, about half of whom were Republicans, obtained through a public records request. The blog post accused Republicans who signed their name of being “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.
Melanie Folwell, the lead organizer of the initiative, said many people she encountered while canvassing were reluctant to sign the petition, in part because it is a public document, but said they would vote for it in November.
“They were afraid of retaliation for signing the contract,” she said.
Statewide vote conducted by the School of Public Service at Boise State University found that nearly 61% of Idahoans strongly or somewhat supported the proposed Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, while about 28% were somewhat or strongly opposed and nearly 12% were unsure. Support among Republicans was about 45%, with 66% support from independent voters.
This is about the same level of support for the right to legal abortion until it becomes enforceable nationwide polls have been noting since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which allowed states to regulate access to abortion for the first time since 1973. Boise State poll in 2025 showed that 55% of residents support legal access to abortion for at least the first trimester, and 20% believe it should be completely banned.
Supporters of a ballot measure to end Idaho’s strict abortion ban raised nearly $110,000. signatures
Idaho’s starter law banning almost all abortions went into effect in August 2022 after the Dobbs decision. Since then, the state has been at the center of many stories about the unintended consequences and legal disputes that can arise from an abortion ban. One study found that 114 of 268 physicians practiced obstetrics left the state after the ban came into force and were replaced by only 20, representing a net loss of 94 in two years.
The state government continued to fight against mandating federal law stabilizing care for every person who comes to the emergency room, which, according to many doctors, in some cases is associated with termination of pregnancy. Idaho’s abortion law does not provide an exception to protect the health of a pregnant patient, despite previous legislative efforts to add one.
Signature verification will likely take a week or longer, but Folwell is confident that organizers will meet and exceed the required threshold of approximately 71,000 qualified signatures. The group collected over 110,000 signatures.
David Ripley, executive director of Idaho Chooses Life, also acknowledges this is a reality. In a statement, he told Stateline it appears the measure will be on the ballot in November and said it represents a fundamental choice for Idaho.
“Idaho Chooses Life will fight this radical proposal with all the resources at our disposal. We are confident that Idaho will reject this measure once it understands the serious harm it will do to our future,” Ripley said in a statement.
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Gender division
Signatories are split roughly evenly between registered Democrats and Republicans, but about 65% are women. Nearly 20% of these women were over the age of 65, with the second largest group being women aged 36 to 45 (11.5%). The largest percentage of men who signed the contract – 10.8% – were also over 65 years of age.
“Sometimes we’ve heard women say, ‘I can’t believe we’re here,’ because they have a broader view of history because they lived in a time before Roe became the law of the land,” Folwell said. “They understand what this loss is.”
John Eckert, the initiative’s regional organizer in southeastern Idaho, knocked on doors in some of the state’s most rural and religious areas. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, Idaho has the second-largest population of residents identifying as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and many of these members live in the southeastern region of the state that borders Utah.
“I found quite a few people who were very opposed to it initially,” Eckert told Stateline. But after asking them a few questions and describing some of the problems Idaho faces as a result of the ban, he said people often agree to sign the petition and let voters decide in November.
“It’s very Idaho to me,” Eckert said.
Back home in Rathdrum, Gallus said she now saw abortion as part of a tower of blocks stacked together. It does not see silos of pregnancy, abortion or fertility, because breaking any of these blocks could destabilize the entire tower.
“We have been conditioned for the last 50 years to think of abortion as a silo, but it is not,” Gallus said. “This polarized discussion on this topic has put the issue in a separate silo, and now we are seeing the fruits of that.”
Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at: kmoseley@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by state linewhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
