By Christina Lords | Editor-in-Chief
The Idaho Family Policy Center filed its lawsuit against Boise State University in Ada County District Court. The advocacy group had sought records related to a 2025 study and its data. Its request returned only a two-page document with the raw data, showing a decline in OB-GYNs. (Photo by Thanasis Zovoilis/Getty Images)
HEALTH
Legislators, anti-abortion group promote data that says ID hasn’t lost OB-GYNs. Doctors push back.
By Laura Guido
As campaigns for and against Proposition 1 — a citizen-led ballot initiative that would repeal the state's strict abortion ban and provide protections for contraception and in vitro fertilization, ramp up for the Nov. 3 general election — the abortion law’s effect on the number of practicing OB-GYNs in Idaho has become a talking point. But determining the true number of doctors providing obstetrician-gynecologist care in the state isn't easy.
The state has said the number of active licenses do not reliably reflect how many OB-GYNs are currently practicing in Idaho.
The Idaho Family Policy Center has underscored the licensing data to question, and file a lawsuit over, a 2025 Boise State University study that found Idaho had lost 35% of its OB-GYNs since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Idaho’s criminal abortion law went into effect.
The exterior of the Idaho Statehouse as seen on March 16, 2026, in Boise. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
GOVERNMENT + POLITICS
If Idaho insurer met hospital’s pay raise, state employees’ costs would rise, official says
By Kyle Pfannenstiel
Many of the legislators’ questions revolved around the state’s insurer, Regence, which dropped an East Idaho hospital, Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello, from its network.
A person looks over the South Fork of the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. (Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management)
COMMENTARY
‘This year is different’: The water reality Idaho can no longer ignore
By Dan Davidson
We’re facing a historically low snowpack, statewide drought emergency, and something fewer people may even know about but that matters enormously: declining natural flows along the Snake River, writes guest columnist Dan Davidson.
MORE IDAHO NEWS FROM US
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ICYMI
Shining a light on other Idaho politics reporting
Note: Some links may lead to stories behind a news organization's paywall
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