July 23, 2026 (Cover image credit: IDGOP FB)
This November, Idahoans have a choice to make: keep the Gem State a sanctuary for all life, including preborn babies, or adopt a radical abortion regime even darker than the days of Roe v. Wade. With less than two months until absentee ballots arrive in mailboxes, we have no time to lose when it comes to educating Idahoans about how radical this initiative really is.
As I order signs and palm cards, post information on our website and social media, and schedule campaign training events throughout the state, it’s worth stopping to ask why. Why are we fighting this initiative so hard? Why are Republicans so opposed to abortion?
Proponents of Proposition 1 will say it’s all about women’s health and bodily autonomy. Social media trolls comment on our posts, asking why we want to control other people’s bodies.
“Other people’s bodies.” Strange how those who support abortion don’t consider unborn babies to be “people.”
I’m reminded of a dark time in our nation’s history, when men and women were bought and sold because those doing the buying and selling did not consider them fully human simply because of the color of their skin. The Republican Party was founded nearly two centuries ago to fight the evil and inhuman scourge of slavery, so it’s entirely appropriate that today we fight the evil and inhuman scourge of abortion.
The truth is that the unborn are just as human as you and me. We often call them “preborn” babies because birth is the natural consequence of pregnancy, not a disease that needs to be cured.
- Just five weeks after conception, a preborn baby’s heart is beating—just as your heart and mine beat today.
- At eight weeks, a baby’s brain is beginning to function.
- At twelve weeks, babies have their own unique fingerprints, different from those of any other human being who has ever existed.
- At fifteen weeks, a preborn baby can feel pain—no different from you or me.
Doctors can now save babies born at just twenty-one weeks, barely halfway through a normal pregnancy, and that threshold continues to move earlier as neonatal medical science advances.
Fathers and mothers have obligations to the children they create, obligations that don’t disappear simply because a preborn baby lives inside his or her mother for nine months. Nor do those obligations end when a baby is born. Both natural law and our statutes recognize the sacred responsibility of parents to care for their children until they are grown and ready to care for themselves. Abortion is no more moral—and should be no more legal—than a parent causing harm to his or her child, whether through neglect or deliberate action.
We are Republicans because we believe that every human being bears the image of God, our Creator, and that each one of us—born or yet unborn—has a God-given right to life. Let’s keep Idaho a place where life is sacred by voting no on Proposition 1.
