July 17, 2026
Make America Principled Again
By: Julianne Young
Human nature seems drawn to conformity. There’s security and power in “everyone is doing it” — a false appeal to the authority of “all.” Even acknowledging another opinion requires mental and emotional work we’d rather avoid – and so we label dissent as ‘hate’ rather than having a thoughtful conversation about disagreement.
This same pressure toward conformity can find its way into the law — sidelining disagreement based on sincere religious conviction as private eccentricity rather than protecting it as a “first freedom.” Proposition 1, now on the ballot this November, establishes a legal framework that could lead to just that: pressure on institutions to set aside deeply held convictions because modern consensus has already moved on.
History Repeats: The Gap in Prop 1
Idaho need not look far to see this pressure at work. For nearly fifteen years, the Little Sisters of the Poor — a Catholic order that cares for the elderly poor — have been in and out of federal court fighting mandates that would force their ministry to fund or facilitate contraceptive coverage they consider morally objectionable. The case has reached the Supreme Court three times and remains unresolved. Individual objectors were never really the target — it was the institution built around a shared religious conviction. The same pattern shows up in Philadelphia’s 2021 fight with a Catholic foster-care agency, decided for the agency but only on narrow grounds that left the broader question of institutional religious liberty unsettled.
Section 39-803(4)(d) of Prop 1 protects the conscience rights of individual physicians who object. But that protection stops at the individual physician — it does not extend to the faith-based hospital, university, pregnancy center, or employer. The institution itself could still be required to facilitate or fund the demands of reproductive freedom, regardless of their founding mission. The individual doctor is protected. The institution built to perpetuate the same shared conviction is not.
The Freedom that Isn’t
Some argue restricting abortion also restricts freedom — which would make Idaho’s pro-life statute “anti-freedom” as well.
But not all restrictions on freedom are equivalent. Idaho’s Defense of Life Act protects the life of both mother and baby: prohibiting a voluntary act by a physician that ends a human life — the ordinary role of law, defining where one person’s freedom ends because it harms another’s. Prop 1 does something categorically different: it proclaims a right to receive something that must be provided by another. One is a lawful restraint; the other, a mandate. Securing one person’s “freedom” at the expense of another’s freedom is, in the end, no freedom at all — but tyranny’s best kept secret.
A Right Elevated, a Freedom Diminished
Prop 1 doesn’t just legalize abortion — it establishes “reproductive freedom” as a fundamental right under Idaho law. Fundamental rights carry automatic priority — when one collides with a First Amendment free exercise claim, religious liberty becomes the exception that must justify itself rather than a baseline that the government honors and accommodates.
Idaho’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act already protects religious exercise in statute — but Prop 1’s sweeping language purports to override any conflicting statute, and its narrow exceptions never mention RFRA. A judge could reasonably read that omission as intentional. That Prop 1 protects physicians only, not institutions, may carry real weight in future court decisions — elevating a new ‘right’ while diminishing our first freedom.
Individuals Bend, Institutions Hold
Our cherished right of religious freedom is a cornerstone of American freedom that extends beyond chapels and sanctuaries. It is expressed not only in words, but also in the institutions we shape and the ways that they serve. The expression of religious views through institutions gives longevity and strength to convictions. Consider a lone physician facing professional and social pressure — exactly the kind of dissenter that conformity is built to wear down. Institutions exist to change that math — holding a position, absorbing pressure, and carrying values across staff turnover and political cycles in a way no single individual can alone. Protect the individual’s conscience but leave the institution exposed, and the cultural resilience of that conviction erodes — one retirement, one hire, one quiet policy change at a time.
What’s at Stake
Idahoans will vote on more than abortion this November 3rd. Prop 1, if passed, would shape our legal landscape for years, and its potential impact on our first freedoms deserves careful consideration. Faith-based hospitals, pregnancy centers, or women’s shelters are more than the sum of their individually-protected staff; they are a collective expression of convictions we hold dear.
Idahoans should reject the overbroad claims and incomplete protections of Prop 1 and safeguard a place — in medicine, in business, and in law — for the continued expression of America’s cherished first freedom.
Julianne Young is a Bingham County Mom who loves faith, family, and freedom; a former state representative; founder of the nonprofit Idaho Family Strong; regional coordinator for Idaho Chooses Life; and 2nd Vice Chair of the Idaho State GOP.
