Abortion is not my favorite topic (I posted about LDS abortion policy in a previous W&T post) and I don’t like writing negative posts about the Church. But the recent letter read to LDS congregations in Idaho directing them to support Idaho’s Proposition 1, the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, requires some explanation and commentary. There is a good media summary here. There’s a fine post on this over at BCC that you should read as well. Let’s work our way through this, ending up with the pros and cons of the LDS letter.
First, what is the current status of abortion law in Idaho that Prop 1 seeks to modify?
Idaho abortion law is currently governed by Senate Bill 1385 (SB 1385). Passed in 2020, SB 1285 prohibits performing abortions unless necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman or in the case of rape or incest. Under SB 1385, criminal abortion is a felony punishable by two to five years in prison. (from Ballotpedia)
This doesn’t quite convey how extreme the present Idaho law really is. A pregnant woman or minor who has been raped or is a victim of incest cannot just go and get an abortion. They must first make a report to police, then get a copy of the written police report, and then present that report to the medical provider. Many victims, for various reasonable reasons, are quite hesitant to do this. An accurate statement would be: Current Idaho law makes it difficult for even victims of rape or incest to obtain an abortion in Idaho.
The ACLU notes:
Idaho has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation, with extremely narrow exceptions. … The extreme and complex nature of Idaho’s abortion laws is linked to a significant loss of healthcare access in the state.
What loss of healthcare access, you might ask? News media reports that roughly 35% of OB/GYN providers have left Idaho (or ceased to practice in Idaho) since 2022. [See this JAMA report for details.] That’s when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision. This, of course, harms all Idaho women who need access to reproductive healthcare, not just those seeking an abortion.
The doctors are leaving practice and leaving the state because of the draconian penalties associated with current Idaho law: two to five years of prison time for violating a vaguely worded statute. Try convincing a jury of twelve conservative Idahoans that your medical opinion that a woman’s life was at risk is sufficiently valid to justify providing an abortion (your defense) when the zealous prosecutor puts up an expert witness or two giving the opposite opinion and calls you a murderer that deserves to go to prison. If the jurors follow the prosecutor’s lead, you go to prison. One wonders why it’s not 65% of providers leaving the state.
How does Prop 1 attempt to change Idaho abortion law?
The Idaho Capitol Sun provides the following text that appears on Idaho ballots in November:
A YES vote would support creating a right to abortion before fetal viability — defined as a fetus’ ability to survive without extraordinary medical measures — and after fetal viability in cases of medical emergency; providing protections against professional discipline and civil and criminal liability for healthcare providers; and codifying a statutory reproductive right to freedom and privacy.
And here is the explanation of a no vote on Prop 1:
A NO vote would support making no change to Idaho’s current law, which preserves the life of preborn children by prohibiting abortion, except when necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman, and during the first trimester in documented cases of rape or incest reported to law enforcement.
That short explanation is incomplete and softens the current law. It makes no mention of the prison time providers potentially face when providing an abortion and no mention of the consequent dramatic reduction in the number of physicians providing abortions in Idaho. It makes no explicit mention of rape and incest victims having to go to the police — and have the police agree with statements of the victim in their written police report — before they can get an abortion. So low-information voters in Idaho may unwittingly read that short NO explanation and think, “Oh, that’s not so bad.”
How did the LDS Church get involved?
The LDS Area Presidency over Idaho sent a letter to all local leaders in Idaho directing them to read the letter in sacrament meetings for the next two weeks. The letter directs members to oppose Prop 1, stating “We … encourage our members to voice their opposition to it in a respectful manner …”. The letter also makes this unequivocal and rather bold statement: “The Church opposes this initiative.”
Idaho state senator Tammy Nichols (who attended BYU-I) posted the letter on X, so it is publicly accessible. A local news organization has confirmed the authenticity of the letter with LDS Church officials, although the report does not identify who specifically they confirmed it with. But there is no First Presidency letter confirming the claim that the Church opposes Prop 1, no press release confirming the statements in the letter, and nothing at all about the Idaho initiative or the letter at the LDS Newsroom or the LDS home page. I would wager a large sum that there will be no mention of it two weeks from now in General Conference either.
Commentary
So now that you have the background for this controversial political issue that the Church has waded into, here are few quick comments. The Church, of course, has the right to take such a position on a political issue (not a candidate) and send a letter to its members. It’s just that in this case it seems like a bad idea to do so.
First, it seems disingenuous for the Church to have such a letter read (twice!) over the pulpit all over the state of Idaho, but not make the text of the written letter available to members in Idaho or provide a statement at LDS.org or the LDS Newsroom that the letter has been sent and what it conveys. They both want to direct members how to vote on Idaho Prop 1 but also not be publicly seen directing members how to vote on Idaho Prop 1. Hint: That won’t work very well.
Second, the letter does not follow LDS procedures for making such statements. The Handbook explicitly states in Section 38: “Only the First Presidency can authorize expressing the Church’s position on moral issues” or “committing the Church to support or oppose specific legislation.” So the direct statement in the letter that “the Church opposes this initiative” does not appear to be properly authorized. Either the Area Presidency went rogue or else senior leadership approved the letter but does not want to publicly acknowledge their approval for the letter. Either way, it raises questions about the validity of letter.
Third, as a practical matter it may be counterproductive for the Church to publicly endorse the initiative and direct members to support it and vote for it. There are a lot of non-LDS voters in Idaho who, hearing the Church intervene so directly against the initiative, will be impelled to vote *for* it. And people outside Idaho who read about the Church’s intervention are likely to think badly of the Church. You think the Church would have learned its lesson after actively participating in Prop 8 in California. Once upon a time the Church knew how to avoid bad PR.
Fourth, getting to the substance of the issue, the Church’s official abortion policy is not as extreme as the current Idaho law that the Area letter endorses by telling members to vote against the initiative. See Handbook Section 38.6.1, “Abortion,” where the exceptions are broader than in the current Idaho law. That section sounds harsh, directing bishops that “A membership council may be necessary if a member submits to, performs, arranges for, pays for, consents to, or encourages an abortion.” But it’s not clear this ever happens. I’m pretty sure that if this was happening, there would be news reports or personal reports on social media of disciplinary actions taken against women or minors who had abortions or family member or doctors who assisted them. I think local leadership now just stays away from any disciplinary actions associated with abortion. I would almost venture to say that the actual policy that bishops and stake presidents apply is to leave abortion decisions to the individual members, regardless of the written policy in the Handbook.
Feel free to respond in the comments, particularly if the letter was read in your congregation. Keep in mind that abortion is a sensitive issue for many people, so keep the comments respectful and focused on the letter and the political issue of Idaho Prop 1.
Wheat & Tares 
The Mormon opposition to the CA and NV abortion-rights initiatives exposes the profound tension between its shallow rhetoric about individual conscience, religious liberty, and political neutrality and its hypocritical use of institutional authority to shape civil law.
The handbook teaches that abortion is a “grave moral matter” and, importantly, does not treat every abortion as categorically forbidden. Its own policy recognizes circumstances involving rape, incest, serious threats to the mother’s health, and pregnancies involving serious fetal defects. It also says that these decisions should involve prayerful consideration by the people involved.
Yet when voters are asked to establish legal protections for abortion, the Mormon Church moves from teaching its own members to actively urging the public to reject such protections.
That creates an obvious question: if the Church believes these decisions can legitimately involve individual circumstances, prayer, medical judgment, and limited exceptions, why should the civil law be written in a way that substitutes one religious institution’s moral boundaries for the choices of people who do not share its theology?
The contradiction becomes sharper when the Church invokes religious liberty as a principle. Religious liberty means that the government should not impose one faith’s doctrines on everyone else. The Church understandably wants freedom to teach its members that abortion is morally wrong. But there is a meaningful difference between saying, “Our faith teaches our members not to have abortions,” and saying, “The law should prevent people outside our faith from making choices that our doctrine permits only under particular circumstances.”
It is an understatement to categorize the Mormon position as hypocritical—not because its opposition to abortion is inherently illegitimate, but because its political activism appears to sit uneasily beside its own claims about conscience, individual religious freedom, and political neutrality. The issue is not whether the Church has a right to hold a moral position. It plainly does. The issue is whether that right should extend to using the institutional power of a major church to impose that moral position through civil law on people who do not share its beliefs.
I can’t help but reflect how different these laws would be if men were able to bear children and face the litany of health issues, including abuse and incest, that women do.