Dr. Kylie Cooper, a maternal-fetal medicine physician, practices in Minnesota after she left Idaho in the spring of 2023, shortly after Idaho’s criminal abortion ban went into effect.
Although it has been nearly three years since she left, Cooper retained her Idaho medical license, she said.
“I have a sliver of hope that maybe things will get better in the future,” Cooper said.
Cooper’s license, as well as every other active medical OB-GYN license in the state, would have shown up in data recently shared by the Idaho Family Policy Center — a Christian advocacy group that lobbied for Idaho’s criminal abortion ban and helped author a 2022 law allowing family members of a fetus aborted after six weeks to the sue the abortion providerfor a minimum of $20,000.
As campaigns for and against Proposition 1— a citizen-led ballot initiative that would repeal the state’s strict abortion ban and provide protections for contraception and in vitro fertilization, ramp up for the Nov. 3 general election — the abortion law’s effect on the number of practicing OB-GYNs in Idaho has become a talking point. But determining the true number of doctors providing obstetrician-gynecologist care in the state isn’t easy.
The state has said the number of active licenses do not reliably reflect how many OB-GYNs are currently practicing in Idaho.
The Idaho Family Policy Center has underscored the licensing data to question, and file a lawsuit over, a 2025 Boise State University study that found Idaho had lost 35% of its OB-GYNs since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Idaho’s criminal abortion law went into effect.
The policy center on Aug. 3 posted a graph on Facebook showing the number of active licenses increasing from 2022 to 2025, writing “Pro-abortion advocates are lying to you.”
“The number of actively licensed OB/GYNs in Idaho has actually increased since our pro-life laws went into effect, according to data from the Idaho Board of Medicine,” the post said.
The center’s posts about the licensure numbers have been shared by Idaho state legislators, such as Twin Falls Republican Rep. Clint Hostetler and Middleton Republican Rep. Tammy Nichols.
Idaho medical board says it has no ‘reliable way’ to count active physicians
The Idaho Board of Medicine, which is under the state Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses, shows the number of active OB-GYN licenses in Idaho going from around 280 in 2022 to just under 340 in 2024, according to the policy center’s graph.
Bob McLaughlin, spokesperson at the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses, known as DOPL, told the Idaho Capital Sun that there are limitations to the state’s data to try and determine how many doctors are practicing in the state.
“1. It’s a two year license,” McLaughlin said in an email. “The number of licenses could fluctuate since the licensee is required to renew on their birthdate every two years and not annually. 2. Physician specialty information is self-reported and is not required as part of licensure. DOPL does not have a reliable way to determine how many licensed physicians are actively practicing in Idaho. 3. Our records reflect licensure status, and an active license does not necessarily mean an individual is currently practicing.”
Doctors left Idaho after abortion ban, study confirms
Family policy center President Blaine Conzatti wrote on the organization’s website, noting that the data from the Board of Medicine is “admittedly imperfect,” citing many of the same limitations McLaughlin named, including that not all physicians practice in states where their license is active and that specialties are self-reported.
“Even still, it’s the best data available,” Conzatti wrote. “And it clearly shows that the number of Idaho OB/GYNs hasn’t been decreasing at the rate that JAMA article researchers – and their boosters in the media – have been telling you.”
The 2025 study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that Idaho experienced a net loss of 94 out of 264 OB-GYN physicians between August 2022 and December 2024.
Those numbers were compiled from “from publicly available credentialing files and sources, licensing boards, physician websites, Idaho’s American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists registry, Idaho Medical Association database, local knowledge of the practices, and direct physician confirmation,” the study’s abstract said.
The researchers tracked relocations, those who stopped practicing obstetrics, died or retired, and counted newly credentialed doctors, the study said. It did not include temporary physicians or family medicine doctors who also practice obstetrics.
“The unique thing about that JAMA Open study was that it was an actual count of actual individuals in Idaho,” said Susie Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association. “It wasn’t an extrapolation. It wasn’t based on estimates. So it was very unique and went through many, many layers of scrutiny before being published.”
Keller said physicians left in that time period for a variety of reasons, some of which included Idaho’s abortion laws but others were personal, such as to be closer to family.
“There are a lot of factors that play into our physician shortage,” Keller said. “And for this particular subset, I think the study did a good job of explaining those different reasons.”
A spokesperson from St. Luke’s, which has hospital clinic locations across southwest Idaho and Twin Falls, told the Idaho Capital Sun there were limitations to using licensing data to try and quantify how many doctors there are practicing.
“While we cannot speak for statewide physician licensing trends, our experience is that licensing figures alone do not necessarily reflect the number of physicians actively providing obstetrical care to Idaho patients or available for long-term practice in Idaho,” spokesperson Joy Prudek said in an email.
She said that licenses may include those who “practice intermittently,” or temporary physicians who fill in gaps, or those who retain licenses from multiple states,
What are Idaho doctors saying?
Cooper, the material-fetal medicine specialist, said she left Idaho because of the threat of prison time under Idaho’s criminal abortion ban and her fear she wouldn’t be able to provide the care she normally would.
As a doctor focused on high-risk pregnancies, she said there were too many potential complications that could warrant an abortion that wouldn’t fall into the law’s exception to prevent the death of the mother or in cases of rape and incest within the first trimester, if there’s a police report filed.
“It was a very difficult decision that we made,” Cooper said. “Thinking through a lot of scenarios, thinking through if I went to prison, what would happen to my husband and children? I mean, it’s just very insane conversations that I never anticipated ever having to have.”
Idaho has had a shortage of doctors for years, said Keller of the Idaho Medical Association. The association has been part of an effort to try and increase physician training opportunities for more than 10 years.
Keller said OB-GYNs have been the focus of tracking because the abortion ban very directly impacted that speciality.
“This particular law that all of a sudden, made evidence-based practice that many of those OB-GYNs had been providing for their patients for many, many years … one day in 2022, it became illegal,” Keller said. “And it very much changed their ability to practice in Idaho.”
Idaho needs 1,400 more medical professionals just to catch up to national average
Dr. Brenna McCrummen is practicing as an OB-GYN in Coeur d‘Alene, and told the Sun on Monday she feels the pressure from the loss of other specialists in North Idaho. In 2023, Sandpoint’s Bonner General Health closed its labor and delivery unit, citing the political climate and staffing issues.
Many women in the area now must travel for hours to seek care in Coeur d’Alene, McCrummen said. She said this can be especially problematic if a pregnant mom experiences unexpected complications.
“Those problems can get much, much worse the farther out you are,” she said. “Those outcomes for baby and for mom are much worse, and I have definitely seen people arrive to our hospital much sicker than they should be, and that’s all due to the time that they have to travel.”
Prudek, of St. Luke’s, said the health system has made progress in attracting obstetricians and gynecologists, but challenges remain.
“From St. Luke’s perspective, recruiting and retaining OB-GYN physicians remains a priority,” Prudek said. “We have had some success recruiting OB-GYN physicians, particularly by attracting physicians with ties to Idaho and graduates of regional medical education programs. At the same time, our need for OB-GYN physicians continues to exceed the available workforce, and we have experienced limited success recruiting OB hospitalists.”
Why is the family policy center suing BSU over the study?
The policy center filed its lawsuit against Boise State University in Ada County District Court on July 24, Idaho EdNews reported.
The advocacy group had sought records related to the 2025 study and its data. Its request returned only a two-page document with the raw data, showing a decline in OB-GYNs.
Conzatti said in the family policy center post announcing the legal challenge that the biggest question for them remained unanswered, “Are OB/GYNs actually leaving the state, as the JAMA study claims? Or is the number of OB/GYNs practicing in Idaho actually increasing, as the data from the Idaho Board of Medicine seems to indicate?”
“This lawsuit means that we’ll finally get the answers,” Conzatti wrote. “And with the upcoming abortion ballot initiative, the need for accurate information has never been more crucial.”
The complaint alleges the university is withholding records, that the response came well after the 10-day deadline required by Idaho public records laws, and that it should not have charged the policy center $257.02 for legal review of the two-page document it received.
Stephany Galbreaith, director of media relations at Boise State, told Idaho EdNews, “We do not comment on pending litigation.”
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.