From the studios of Boise State Public Radio News, I'm Gemma Ghatet. This is Idaho Matters. After months of gathering signatures, filing petitions, and navigating lawsuits, constitutional amendments that will protect or expand abortion rights will appear on the ballot in 10 states come November 5. Now these states include blue-leaning, red-leaning, even swing states. And as voters go to the polls and cast their ballot for reproductive rights, what could these outcomes mean for the future of Idaho? Well, joining us now to talk more about this are Melanie Falwell, lead organizer for Idaho's United for Women and Families, McKay Cunningham, a constitutional scholar and graduate professor at the College of Idaho, and Dr. Lauren Colson, a Boise-based family physician, as well as president of Idaho Coalition for Safe Health Care. I want to welcome all three of you to the program. Hello, Gemma. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in June of 2022, many states, including Idaho, now have near or total abortion bans, and so Melanie, my first question is for you. Your organization conducted polling earlier this year to see where Idahoans stand on this issue. Can you tell us what that poll showed? Absolutely. We've conducted polling a couple different rounds now that have consistently pointed to the same thing. And that is that most of us, most Idahoans, believe that access to abortion, in some or most cases, is important. Our polling indicates that 63% of Idahoans believe that the decision to have an abortion should be made between a woman, her doctor, maybe her family, never do they say politicians, that we should lead this up to politicians and law enforcement. So with that said, Melanie, it's clear from the polling that you've done, at least for the most part, Idahoans agree on abortion access in some way. So why, in your opinion, hasn't our legislature looked at these polls, looked at their constituents, and have done something about this? Well, that's a great question. I mean, the reality is our legislature has the power not just to call themselves back into session at any time, but also to really remedy whatever problem they see fit. There is a supermajority party. If there was consensus among them to get this done, they would get it done. But I think what you're seeing is a symptom of the dysfunction that's present right now in, you know, not just Idaho's political system, but many state legislatures across this country. And that here in Idaho is probably a product of our closed primary system, which has really catered to what we see in our polling as a slim majority of Idahoans, often kind of the loudest people in the room, the loudest, most partisan people in the room who've kind of run the show on what laws get passed and what direction the legislature has headed. I think that can explain some of the inaction. I think you'd probably need to ask one of them for the details of why they haven't acted, but it certainly has been disappointing. And that has necessitated us pursuing a citizens ballot initiative, which in Idaho citizens can make their own laws when the legislature fails to. So Melanie, talk to us a little bit more about that, about your organization itself, and the fact that you are hoping to get this citizens initiative on the ballot in 2026. Correct. Yes. Actually, Idahoans United for Women and Families is a statewide nonprofit or organization. We've been meeting informally and then quite formally for two years in the wake of Idaho's trigger ban coming into effect. And in consultation with all kinds of subject matter experts, doctors, we have come together to file language, ballot initiative language. We actually filed four policies last month, actually now in August, August 15th. We're eagerly awaiting our titles from our Attorney General. There will be some additional bureaucratic process. And then we expect to have a final single policy in hand that we can begin circulating, possibly December or January. So, okay, let me bring you into the conversation. The Supreme Court in overturning Roe v. Wade made the point of this takes it back to the states. Now, states can decide on what they want to do. And we're hearing that argument quite a lot in national politics. But with that said, that means that women's reproductive rights are based on geography. I mean, and that is exactly where we are right now. Yeah, the idea that the Supreme Court really did nothing other than allow more local control over local affairs with regard to women's reproductive rights, that's certainly a strong argument. That is certainly what the court did. One of the flaws, however, is the tyranny of the majority and the reason that we have fundamental rights, fundamental civil liberties that are enshrined in our Constitution and so that the majority can't infringe on those rights that we deem to be so fundamental. And this decision of what to do with one's own body without having to worry about overreach from a governmental entity, that had, at least historically, since 1973 in Roe v. Wade been deemed a fundamental right. So while it does ring true, that now states get to decide that it's in contrast to this idea of fundamental rights and we shouldn't have a tyranny of majority specifically with regard to things that are so ingrained in us with regard to how we make our own medical decisions. Well, with that said, McKay, even as we see abortion rights on the ballot in states, as I mentioned, 10 states in November, other states have gone to the ballots as well. Even if all of these pass, what could happen if we have an administration that decides to put a national abortion ban in place, can they do that, and can it override these constitutional state amendments? The answer to that is yes, just plain and simple. If we have a bunch of states with ballot initiatives, for example, or create statutes that protect abortion, that protect women's women's reproductive rights, those measures, whether it's in the state constitution, or whether it's a state statute, would be preempted if federal Congress creates a federal ban just by virtue of the supremacy clause, which states that if there is any conflict between a state law and the federal law, the federal law is supreme. All right, Dr. Colson, I'm curious about the consequences that you have seen in regards to Idaho's existing laws when we are looking at reproductive health care. I think what you saw initially when the governor came out and our abortion bans went into effect was, Dr. Scrambling, to figure out how to still provide obstetrical care to the acceptable medical standard that we were all trained to provide it in, I think that people thought that you can just get rid of abortion, but still provide obstetrical care the same as it's always been, and that it's just not true. Pregnancy is a complicated, evolving process, and you made people that provide OB terrified to provide OB to do the thing that they were trained to do. The fallout from that was, as we saw from a report from the Idaho physician while being action collaborative, that 22% of people practicing OB in the state no longer are. Whether you are someone, regardless of what you think about abortion, whether if you're someone that wanted obstetrical care, if you're a pregnant person in the state, there are no less OBs here to serve you. And then there's been a ripple effect. This doesn't just affect OB, a lot of people who provide obstetrical care are married to other doctors, other doctors who are looking to take jobs in the state, see what's going on, and they don't want to come here. Our state doesn't have a lot of specialty training programs within the state, and so we have to attract doctors, different specialists from out of state to come here, and looking at the landscape, it is just very hard to attract new doctors. So two years later, we're left with a significant physician shortage, and it's not just OB. And Dr. Colson, anecdotally, what I have noticed is that with that OB shortage, they're also, it's OB-GYN, they're also gynecologists. You can go to an OB-GYN for more than just maternal healthcare, right? You go for your annual exam, you go for your mammograms, you know, there are so many things that you go to your OB-GYN for that have nothing to do with pregnancy. And there is now a backlog at certain healthcare centers, in particular, when it comes to women getting their mammograms on time. Is that a fair assessment, because I am just talking anecdotally from myself, from other women, that I know, that people are seeing this issue? I would go beyond even just OB-GYNs. I am a family doctor who provides obstetrical care. Idaho, as a very rural state, relies a lot on family doctors to provide obstetrical services, like gynecological care, adult services, pediatric services, because we don't have all the specialists. So when you lose a family doctor, you lose all of those services, not even just reproductive healthcare. But yes, definitely to answer your question, there are OB-GYNs that provide a variety of healthcare services who now either aren't doing so, or the ones that are left are so backlog that you can't get in for an appointment for weeks or even months. Melanie, what are the next steps in the process of getting a final petition on to the 2026 ballot here in Idaho? Sure. We're in our final kind of bureaucratic steps, we're navigating, refiling our ballot language, which has come back from its review by the Attorney General. We will then await titles from our Attorney General. Like in a lot of other states, the Attorney General retains the right to give titling to the initiative. So that means, however our ballot initiative appears on the ballot, he gets to decide the language that it's put forward to voters. That's pretty powerful. And so we will have to navigate that process, which could involve litigation. And then from there, we look forward to having something in hand that we can begin to gather for signatures, and we will ultimately need to gather signatures for about 18 months and hit a threshold of could be anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 signatures throughout the entire state. Dr. Colson, I know that there are physicians who are supporting this effort. Why is this campaign important to you? When the dumpster came out and the abortion bans went into effect, we have not been silent as a medical community. We have tried to go through the channels of talking to lawmakers. We've tried meeting with legislators. We've tried meeting with the governor's office. We've tried through our professional organizations to draft bills using languages that doctors can understand in order to make these exceptions more workable. And nothing has gotten done. There was a law passed that made some very, very small changes that have still not provided workable exceptions in order for doctors to be able to provide obstetrical care, reproductive health care that's up to the national medical standard. And so what this ballot initiative serves as is just another avenue, right? Another way of creating law that would help us as physicians to practice medicine the way we were trained to do so. And the folks that have written these laws have involved the doctors that are on the ground and asked physicians about language that would make it so that they could practice medical care. Mckay, what do you expect, and I know you don't have a crystal ball, but what do you expect we could see in these 10 other states where abortion will be on the ballot come November? And as I said in our introduction, these are blue states, red states. I mean, even swing states have these initiatives on their ballot. Yeah, several of the swing states have laws that infringe upon a woman's right with regard to reproductive rights. And I think that a lot of the national surveys that we have seen so far suggest that that will definitely push the needle, it will drive voter turnout. In Georgia, for example, their abortion restriction outlaws abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. And in Georgia, just recently, tragically, two Georgia women died who were trying to navigate that state law that banned abortions at six weeks of pregnancy. Both of these women already had children that they left behind. And like Idaho, Georgia's law permitted abortion if the patient's life is at risk, but it had to be the patient's life at risk and not the patient's health at risk. One of these women was at Atlanta area hospital, and she was refused for 20 hours to perform a routine DNC to clear her uterus when her body hadn't expelled all the fetal tissue. So it's these sorts of galvanizing events in states like Georgia, states like North Carolina, states like Arizona that I think will have a big effect. The interesting thing to me is that when you turn the card and you look at Idaho, the only way, in my opinion, for Idaho to reform its near total abortion ban, which, by the way, is worse than any of those that I've just mentioned with regard to it, some draconian nature, the only way for that to happen in my view is through a voter initiative. Just like Dr. Coulson said, there's been a strong pushback last session and the Idaho legislature did not budge. Then we had our primaries, and our primaries pushed the Idaho legislature even farther to the far right. So I would expect something along the lines of the fetal personhood law coming from the legislature rather than any reform to the law that we have right now absent in an initiative like the one we are discussing. So Melanie, what do you think that means for Idaho if we predict the rights continue to win at the ballot box as it has in the past? Because we should note that there are other states that have already passed these initiatives, one being Kansas, which a lot of people thought that it would fail in Kansas. The absolute opposite happened. Absolutely. Here's the important thing to know. We don't just have polling to go off of. We also have voter behavior in states that are a lot like Idaho. Everywhere where abortion access, either expanding access to abortion or removing restrictions on abortion has been on the ballot everywhere. It has won every time. Indications are quite strong in the 10 states you've talked about that we're on a similar trajectory, and there are going to be other red states, Montana. We have our eye on Montana, which is, you know, a Western neighbor, quite red state. That is a very Republican, very Trump state. I expect abortion to win there. We expect abortion to win in places like Missouri. I think what is telling about that is how this sort of binary of red or blue, Republican or Democrat pro-life pro-choice that has failed us. It's just not in tune with where most Americans and most Idahoans are at. I think because of the nature of these decisions, these sensitive, urgent, private decisions that are best made by a doctor, pregnancy is complicated. And I certainly don't need the input of the Idaho Legislature or a real Labrador when I'm in an urgent medical situation. I think that that resonates with people. I expect abortion to continue to win nationally and most, if not all, places. And I think that will be galvanizing here in Idaho for this very strong stirring of state-wide nonpartisan, all comers, all kinds of people who have expressed interest in this issue, passionate about this issue, people know how they feel on this issue. And I think it's time to have laws that express where they're at with that. With two minutes left, McKay, what's unique about Idaho's Constitution and ballot initiative process that folks need to understand? One of the things that is interesting about the initiative process in Idaho, which is just fascinating because it allows citizens to identify and create a law and then to propose it and then have us vote on it. And if 51 or excuse me, more than 50% of Idahoans vote for that citizen-made law, it becomes the law. The other interesting thing with regard to initiatives under our Constitution is that the sitting legislature can then repeal it. So when Medicaid expansion occurred a couple of years ago, there was a lot of concern that the legislature who had historically opposed Medicaid expansion, but Idahoans did it nevertheless through the voter initiative process, that the Idaho legislature would repeal it immediately. They didn't do so. So all of that to say, even if this voter initiative is successful, the Idaho legislature will have an opportunity to repeal it and that would be an interesting thing because it would suggest that the Idaho legislature is purposefully and clearly at odds with the people whom they represent. Before I let you go, Melanie, I've got less than a minute left. How can folks get involved if they would like to be a part of your organization? Absolutely. So we are awaiting our language back. We are ready to begin organizing statewide. We are raising money for this effort, and they can visit IdahoansUnited.com, sign up for updates. They're coming fast and furious. We are on the cusp of a statewide effort to organize, and we all commerce are welcome. I want to thank all of you for taking time today to have this conversation. We've been talking with Melanie Falwell, lead organizer for Idahoans United for women and families. McKay Cunningham, a graduate professor at College of Idaho, as well as a constitutional scholar, and Dr. Lauren Colson, a Boise-based family physician and president of Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare. We have been discussing reproductive rights being on the ballot in 10 states come November, and also what that could mean for Idaho moving forward. Thanks so much for listening to Idaho Matters. Boise State Public Radio, and Idaho Matters are members of the NPR Network. It's an independent coalition of public media podcasters. You can find more shows on the network wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jamika Det. We'll see you tomorrow. The candidates for November are set. I know Donald Trump's tight. Between now and election day, a campaign season unfolding faster. Kamala Harris is not getting a promotion. In any in recent history. Follow it all with new episodes every weekday on the NPR Politics Podcast.
