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It has been four years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion, leaving people in the U.S. to navigate a confusing patchwork of abortion protections, restrictions, and outright bans depending on jurisdiction. Organizers have ramped up efforts to improve access since the ruling, and thanks to that work, measures to protect and ensure reproductive freedoms are expected to be on the ballot in three states come November: Idaho, Nevada, and Virginia.

“When Idaho’s trigger ban went into effect in August of 2022, people needed to talk about it, and we came together informally and then eventually [there was] the idea that, ‘Hey, we need to draft a ballot initiative. We need to raise money for some attorneys. We need to get our act together,’” Melanie Folwell, executive director of Idahoans United for Women and Families, told Truthout. That organization was founded soon after and has led the campaign to get the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act Initiative on the ballot this year. The initiative would decriminalize abortion and provide that “every person has the right to … make personal decisions about reproductive health care,” including abortion, contraception, and more.

Idaho was one of 13 states with trigger bans on the books when Dobbs came down. Those bans were passed after the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade upheld a constitutional right to abortion, meaning they could not be enforced as long as that decision stood. But when Roe was overturned, the bans came into effect.

Other restrictions and bans have followed Dobbs as the Trump administration and right-wing lawmakers move to eliminate reproductive health care. Nationwide, 30 states now have bans, hostile legislation, or lack reproductive rights protections, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Effects of Idaho’s Abortion Ban

When Idaho’s ban first came into effect, it prohibited abortion with exceptions for the life of the pregnant person and some survivors of rape and incest. Then in 2023, the state’s Republican supermajority narrowed the rape and incest exceptions to apply only during the first trimester. Today, the ban is among the strictest in the nation.

Nonconsensual Drug Testing Has Criminalized Tens of Thousands of Pregnant People

Most Idahoans who need access to an abortion are now forced to travel out of state, including some pregnant patients facing medical emergencies. Access to other reproductive health care has also become more difficult as OB-GYNs leave, feeling it no longer safe to practice in a state with a near-total abortion ban that includes criminal and civil liabilities for providers found in violation of the law. Some hospital labor and delivery departments have shuttered altogether — including, Folwell said, the one where she gave birth to her daughter........

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