Idaho voters on Tuesday rejected Proposition 1, a citizen initiative that would have restored abortion access up to fetal viability and in emergencies, leaving the state's near-total ban in force. Idaho was the outlier on a night when voters in Missouri, Nevada and Virginia sided with abortion rights.
The measure needed only a simple majority but drew about 44% support, or 286,909 votes, in early returns counted as of 2:37 a.m. Wednesday. Roughly 56% voted no. Idahoans United for Women and Families, the group that wrote the initiative, conceded shortly after 12:20 a.m.
The results become official only after the Idaho State Board of Canvassers certifies them at its Nov. 24 meeting.
The defeat keeps in place a law that outlaws nearly all abortions, allowing them only to prevent a patient's death or, in the first trimester, in cases of rape or incest when a police report is provided. Doctors convicted of violating it face up to five years in prison, loss of their medical licenses and civil penalties.
Melanie Folwell, executive director of Idahoans United, called the loss gutting and said women would keep suffering under one of the country's cruelest bans. She blamed what she described as a disinformation campaign about the initiative, bankrolled by more than $1.3 million that the Latter-day Saints church and Boise's Catholic diocese contributed.
Her group is now urging residents to lean on legislators, especially those who told voters to reject Prop 1 and wait for a legislative fix, to add exceptions when lawmakers return for their next session.
The Idaho Republican Party and both churches strongly opposed the measure, and opponents argued the state's current exemptions are enough to protect a pregnant woman's life.
Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, which helped draft the ban, said the outcome matched months of internal polling and predicted it would discourage abortion-rights activists from trying again. Mary Strow, communications director for Stop Prop 1, faulted deceptive advertising she said was funded from outside the state.
Both sides spent heavily. The Idahoans United political action committee raised more than $5.8 million and spent over $2 million, while the opposing PAC, Too Extreme for Idaho, raised nearly $4.7 million and spent more than $4.2 million, state campaign finance data showed as of Tuesday.
Supporters had argued the ban was costing Idaho its obstetricians. A peer-reviewed 2025 study in JAMA counted 114 obstetrician-gynecologists, 43% of the 268 doctors practicing obstetrics statewide, who had quit obstetrics or moved out of state in the ban's first two years, a period ending in December 2024.
We will see more doctors leave the state as a result of this election.
Melanie Folwell, executive director of Idahoans United for Women and Families
On Oct. 30, a federal appeals court ruled that the law contains no exception for patients whose physical or mental health is endangered by continuing a pregnancy. Idaho doctors have said that gap leaves them feeling compelled to wait until a patient's life is at risk before acting.
A different result elsewhere
In Missouri, 55% of voters defeated Amendment 3, a legislative effort to reinstate the abortion ban that voters had overturned by initiative in 2024. It would also have added a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, already state law, to the constitution, a pairing national anti-abortion leaders had promoted as a model for other states.
Nevada voters gave about 63% approval to the second required vote on a constitutional right to abortion up to fetal viability, after passing it with 64% in 2024. In Virginia, 62% backed an amendment protecting decisions about abortion, birth control, miscarriage management and fertility care.
Hannah Ledford, executive director of the Fairness Project, which funded the campaign against Missouri's amendment, said Idaho's result was not surprising because asking voters to grant a right is harder than persuading them to vote down a rollback.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, measures to restore abortion access had previously failed in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota. Idaho now joins that list.
