The law would restore the right to abortion, ensure access to healthcare in cases of pregnancy complications or emergencies, and safeguard birth control, emergency contraception and IVF in Idaho.
Hundreds of reproductive freedom advocates gathered on the steps of the Idaho state Capitol on Saturday, June 28, for the “Rise & Sign Rally” to support a citizen-led initiative to put the Reproductive Freedom & Privacy Act on the November 2026 ballot. The law would restore the right to abortion, ensure access to healthcare in cases of pregnancy complications or emergencies, and safeguard birth control, emergency contraception and IVF in Idaho.
“Today’s rally is just the beginning,” said Melanie Folwell, executive director of Idahoans United for Women and Families, which organized the rally to launch a statewide grassroots campaign to collect signatures needed to put the Reproductive Freedom & Privacy Act on the ballot. “Across the state, Idahoans are ready to rise, sign, and take back the right to make deeply personal medical decisions without interference from politicians.”
Idahoans United plans to hold 11 events in communities across the state between July 8 and 21, where volunteers will educate voters about their rights, collect petition signatures and invite people to join the growing movement for reproductive rights.
At Saturday’s rally, community members shared personal testimonies, laying bare how Idaho’s abortion bans have endangered families. “My pregnancy turned into a medical emergency, but because of Idaho’s law, I was told to wait until I was worse. My life was put in danger simply because politicians wrote a law that ignored medical realities,” recalled Kate Campbell-Covell, already a mother of two and expecting a third. “No family should be forced to go through that. We need a law that trusts doctors and women, not one that puts politics before patients.”
Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Idaho’s trigger ban went into effect, nearly one in four OB-GYN doctors have fled the states, stranding women across Idaho without reliable access to reproductive healthcare services.
Dr. Becky Uranga, one of the few OB-GYNs left and a practicing Catholic, laid out the stakes plainly: “Since the abortion ban, we have fewer doctors, fewer options and more fear in our exam rooms. The criminalization of care has made it difficult to practice medicine responsibly. Every time a doctor leaves, more Idaho patients lose access to the care they need, including for those who eagerly want to grow their families. I am supporting this initiative because I am pro-family, pro-baby, and I want to get back to a safer Idaho for all.”
Polls show Idahoans overwhelming support reproductive rights: 63 percent believe abortion should be a decision between a woman, her family and her doctor and the same percentage oppose felony charges against healthcare providers who perform abortions. Close to 70 percent believe “we should not impose our views of abortion on others.” These numbers underscore a powerful disconnect between Idaho’s laws and the will of its people.
Caren DeAngelis, an Idaho mother of two adult daughters, explained why she attended Saturday’s rally: “It’s horrifying that the freedoms that I had for 50 years don’t exist here anymore. Idaho has become a dangerous place for women to be pregnant. My daughters don’t want to live here and it breaks my heart. But I’m going to do my damnedest to return sanity to the place I call home!”
Folwell boils it down: Idahoans want control over their own health choices, a reality she says both the data and door-knocks have made unmistakably clear. “At their core, Americans and Idahoans chafe at the idea of government overreach into their most private spaces and into their ability to have the personal liberty and the privacy to make whatever decision they like with their doctor and their family about their futures and their health. We saw it in our data, but we’ve also seen it out on the road in conversations with people. The ban went too far. It’s not a lot more complicated than that. And what our initiative is aiming to do isn’t terribly complicated. We are seeking to restore access and power over reproductive rights, access to healthcare back to the Roe standard, to the pre-ban standard.”
Though Idahoans can’t amend their Constitution by ballot, the state does permit citizen-led initiatives to place proposed laws on the ballot for a popular vote. To qualify an initiative for the ballot, supporters must collect signatures from six percent of voters overall—about 70,700—and meet that same threshold for 18 out of the 35 legislative districts. The deadline for submitting signatures is April 30, 2026.
Idahoans United has recruited over 1000 volunteers and their goal is to collect 110,000 signatures. “We have the seasoned veterans who have been at every fight, and we’ve got people who say I’ve never done anything political in their lives but this just matters so much,” said Folwell. “That is very energizing!”
Folwell made one point crystal clear: no paid signature firms, no outside operatives—just Idahoans driving this effort: “We are doing this as a grassroots effort powered by volunteers. Idaho has a problem. We have an Idaho solution, being powered by Idahoans, funded by Idahoans, and they’re going to go gather all those signatures. We believe that this is the way we start to build something that can protect the reform and keep us from sliding back very quickly.”
In a tactic echoing several other conservative states, Idaho Republicans have tried to thwart the initiative by inserting biased language into the description of the measure on the ballot. Last January, Idahoans United sued Idaho’s Attorney General Raúl Labrador—an ardent abortion opponent—to remove inaccurate and biased language from the initiative’s title and fiscal impact statement. On June 16, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the attorney general’s office had violated the state’s “good faith” requirement and ordered them to revise the language in both the title and impact statement. On June 25, 2025, the Court approved the revised language.
In the face of draconian and undemocratic abortion bans, the people are seizing power at the grassroots level, Folwell says. “There is no fix for us coming from on high. The federal government is not going to fix this. There is no fix from the Supreme Court in our lifetime. But in Idaho we do have access to the citizens ballot initiative, and so, in the absence of action from our legislature, which we are quite convinced will never come, we do have the power to self-legislate so that’s what we’ve done.”
To volunteer, sign up here. To support the ballot initiative, donate here.
