As Idaho voters prepare to weigh in on Proposition 1 — a citizen-led initiative to repeal the state’s strict abortion ban — a Christian advocacy group and several Republican state legislators are promoting licensing data they say disproves a peer-reviewed study finding Idaho lost 35 percent of its OB-GYNs since 2022. Medical professionals and their organizations say the approach is flawed.

The Competing Claims

A 2025 Boise State University study concluded that Idaho shed roughly a third of its obstetrics and gynecology workforce following the state’s criminal abortion ban. The Idaho Family Policy Center — a Christian advocacy organization that lobbied for the ban and helped author a 2022 law allowing family members to sue abortion providers for a minimum of $20,000 — has filed a lawsuit challenging that study.

On August 3, the policy center posted a graph showing active OB-GYN licenses in Idaho rising from around 280 in 2022 to just under 340 in 2024. Twin Falls Republican Rep. Clint Hostetler and Middleton Republican Rep. Tammy Nichols amplified the post on social media, citing it as evidence the workforce crisis narrative is overblown.

Why Doctors Say License Counts Don’t Tell the Full Story

The Idaho Board of Medicine itself has acknowledged that active license counts are not a reliable indicator of how many OB-GYNs are actually working in the state. Idaho licenses renew on a two-year cycle tied to each physician’s birthdate rather than annually, and physicians are not required to report their specialty to maintain a license. An active license, in other words, does not confirm that someone is seeing patients in Idaho.

The case of Dr. Kylie Cooper illustrates the problem. Cooper, a maternal-fetal medicine physician, left Idaho in spring 2023 after the criminal abortion ban took effect and relocated to Minnesota. She still holds an active Idaho medical license — meaning she would appear in the licensing data as an Idaho OB-GYN despite no longer practicing here.

“I have a sliver of hope that maybe things will get better in the future,” Cooper told the Idaho Capital Sun, suggesting she kept her license open to that possibility rather than as evidence of active practice.

What the JAMA Study Found

A separate study published in JAMA Network Open examined actual individual physicians rather than aggregate license totals. That research tracked OB-GYN physicians by name and found a net loss of 94 out of 264 practitioners between August 2022 and December 2024 — a figure consistent with the Boise State findings.

Susie Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association, said the methodology of the JAMA study sets it apart. “The unique thing about that JAMA Open study was that it was an actual count of actual individuals in Idaho,” she told the Idaho Capital Sun. That approach avoids the ambiguity inherent in license data, where specialty is self-reported and residency is unverified.

Stakes Heading Into November

The dispute over physician data is unfolding against the backdrop of the November 3 vote on Proposition 1, which would repeal Idaho’s abortion ban and add explicit protections for contraception and IVF access. Supporters of the ban have an evident interest in minimizing public perception of the law’s effect on healthcare access, while supporters of the initiative argue the workforce decline represents a measurable, ongoing harm to Idaho women.

Healthcare access has emerged as one of the most concrete and contested elements of Idaho’s abortion policy debate. Idaho’s rural communities in particular face pressure on hospital services and provider networks, and the question of whether the state can attract and retain maternal care specialists has practical consequences beyond the political fight.

The Idaho Family Policy Center did not dispute the Board of Medicine’s own caveat that license counts imperfectly reflect actual practice. The organization has maintained its lawsuit against the Boise State study while continuing to circulate the licensing graph as a counterpoint to what it characterizes as misleading research. Republican legislators who shared the post have not publicly addressed the Board of Medicine’s acknowledgment of the data’s limitations.