Initiative to end Idaho’s strict abortion ban qualifies for November’s general election ballot

The voter initiative seeking to end Idaho’s strict abortion ban has officially qualified to appear on ballots in November, Idahoans United for Women and Families, the group leading the effort, announced Monday.

Idahoans United for Women and Families turned in more than 110,000 signatures to the office on July 2, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported. 

“We are just immensely proud of the foundation we have built, and to continue that outreach into the fall,” Idahoans United Executive Director Melanie Folwell said in an interview Friday. “We have known from early on this issue was deeply personal and had the ability to break through divisive partisan frames we are navigating nationally right now and certainly, very accurately here in Idaho.”

“The thing about the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act is it speaks to a fundamental Idaho value and a fundamental American value that no matter our own personal beliefs, we ought not impose those on others,” Folwell added. “When it comes to making the tough decisions in our lives and in our families, we call the shots and not the government. That is something that has resonated in every corner of the state.”

In Idaho, a ballot initiative allows residents to directly propose and decide whether to enact a new law. To qualify for the ballot, initiative supporters must collect the signatures from a total of at least 6% of registered voters statewide, as well as 6% of registered voters in at least 18 of Idaho’s 35 legislative districts. 

In a Monday press release, Idahoans United said more than 1,250 volunteers helped collect the 110,000 signatures, and Idahoans from all of the state’s 44 counties signed the initiative’s petition.

“The 110,000+ signatures on the Reproductive Freedom & Privacy Act are the most collected for a qualified ballot initiative in Idaho history, over 1.5 times the 70,725 valid signatures required by law,” the press release said.

The initiative would take a simple majority of votes in the Nov. 3 general election to become law.

County clerks performed an initial check to determine whether signatures came from individual eligible registered voters, and the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office completed the final verification. A spokesman from the Secretary of State’s office confirmed the initiative has qualified for the November election on Monday.

The proposed initiative would legalize abortion until fetal viability or in cases of emergency — essentially re-establishing the abortion rights Idahoans had before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision four years ago. The initiative would also enumerate rights related to reproductive health, such as protections for access to contraception and IVF, and privacy in medical decisions.

The initiative faces strong pushback from some in the Idaho GOP. 

Members of the Idaho Republican Party at its summer meeting last month approved a resolution to call on the state Legislature to repeal the abortion initiative should it pass in November.

There are 16 legislative candidates who won their Republican primary elections that said they supported overturning the initiative if it passed in a survey distributed by a group called Honor Idaho.

The candidates are: Scott Herndon, Jane Sauter, Cornel Rasor, Vito Barbieri, Elaine Price, Cindy Carlson, Kyle Harris, Colton Bennett, Christy Zito, Judy Boyle, Camille Blaylock, Kent Marmon, Jeff Cornilles, Jaron Crane, Steve Tanner and Clint Hostetler. 

On Thursday, Idaho GOP chairwoman Dorothy Moon released an op-ed denouncing the initiative as “deceptive,” and said she was proud to cast a vote while she was serving in the Legislature to support Idaho’s trigger law that went into effect after Roe fell.

Now organizers of the initiative are “trying to undo that progress and turn back the clock to a time when any unborn child could face the death penalty for the crime of being inconvenient,” Moon said in the op-ed.

Despite Idaho’s status as a deeply conservative state — President Donald Trump won here by nearly 37 percentage points in 2024 — an estimated one-fourth, or 28%, of more than 110,000 signatures collected by the group spearheading the proposed Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act are from registered Republicans, Stateline previously reported.

According to the campaign’s data, more than 33% of the signers are unaffiliated voters, 37% are Democrats and about 1% are Libertarians. Those shares may be slightly higher or lower now that petitions are certified by the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office to put the proposal on the November ballot.