Idaho’s OBGYNs Are Jumping Ship

According to a new report, Idaho has lost 35% of practicing OBGYNs since August 2022 due to the state's abortion ban.

By Danielle Han | August 1, 2025 | 5:21pm

A group of doctors joins abortion rights supporters at a rally outside the Supreme Court on April 24, 2024. Photo: Getty Images

Among potatoes, waterfalls, and Demi Moore, Idaho is host to a number of icons. Less known it is, however, for hosting a record low number of physicians per capita. But thanks to the state’s anti-abortion legislation, it’s pretty much secured the dishonor for the foreseeable future.

According to a new JAMA paper, Idaho lost 94 of its 268 (or 35%) practicing OBGYNs between August 2022 and December 2024, due to the state’s near-total abortion ban. With doctors either leaving, closing practices, or retiring, institutions like the Idaho Medical Association are worried. “This study clearly shows how our legal environment is causing physicians to leave the state and making it more difficult to recruit new ones to take their place,” CEO Susie Keller announced in a press release. “Idaho is digging a physician workforce hole that will take years, if not decades, to fill.”

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Owing to anti-abortion Governor Brad Little, Idaho has one of the country’s most draconian abortion bans. The state’s ban even made it to the Supreme Court in June 2024, after the Biden administration sued—claiming Idaho defied EMTALA guidance—in August 2022. But the court ultimately ruled… nothing, instead punting it back to a lower court. “So, to be clear: Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her concurrence at the time. “It is delay.”

Physicians are allowed to perform the procedure in cases of reported rape or incest, ectopic pregnancies, or to save the mother’s life—but the latter leaves them a blurry picture of what they can and can’t do. Moreover, performing an abortion for any other reason can land them jail time of up to five years–or cost them their medical license.

Some doctors have been particularly vocal about the impact the legislation has had on their ability to provide care. “I made Idaho my home…then the abortion bans took effect,” wrote maternal-fetal doctor Kylie Cooper in an essay published by the Idaho Capital Sun in 2023. After leaving the state, she later explained: “It was demoralizing to see people’s bodily autonomy taken away. Patients have been unable to receive abortion care for pregnancies with lethal fetal abnormalities; risks from underlying health complications; or—most terrifying—major complications, such as hemorrhage or preeclampsia.”

Despite calls to reform the legislation, lawmakers have refused to budge–instead putting their efforts towards tipping abortion-regulation bills to favor the physicians. (One of which is the Medical Ethics Defense Act, which would permit doctors to regulate care based on their personal beliefs.) Keller, however, says this misses the mark. The real concern among OBGYNs, she explained, is the state’s blanket abortion ban. Texas faces a similar crisis: a 2024 survey found that, out of 450 doctors, nearly a fifth of respondents were thinking about defecting as a result of the state’s abortion ban.

Still, the fight to redeem reproductive rights in Idaho is a multipronged front. On the floor, Democratic representative Ilana Rubel has sponsored a bill that would repeal the ban; activist group Idahoans United is collecting signatures to qualify for a ballot vote that could end the strict bans in the November 2026 election; and the Idaho Medical Association is standing by its original stance: that the abortion ban “[undermine] core medical ethics.”

The JAMA study concludes by saying the “large decrease in the number of [OBGYN] physicians practicing obstetrics was observed following changes in state-level abortion laws after Dobbs,” before warning of a bleak picture of what’s to come. “Idaho has low numbers of OB/GYN physicians per capita, [five] so a reduction in the workforce may pose a threat to health care access and broader community health.” Great job, Idaho–your legacy will be remembered in the years to come.

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