Abortion is on the ballot this November in a growing number of states.
On Monday, Idaho joined three other states that will have an abortion question on their ballots — though there is a big difference between some of them.
'This is going to have a profound impact on Idaho.'
Idaho's initiative, pushed by the group Idahoans United for Women & Families, would roll back Idaho's blanket ban on abortion that went into effect after the Dobbs decision.
Idahoans will vote for or against a measure enforcing the "right to abortion before fetus viability."
Fetal viability is usually considered to be around the 21-week mark of the pregnancy, though some discretion is also given to the doctor as well.
David Ripley, the CEO of Idaho Chooses Life, told the Associated Press that he is preparing to campaign against the measure.
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"This is going to have a profound impact on Idaho," Ripley said, "and will basically invalidate virtually every pro-life law that the legislature has enacted over the last 30 to 40 years."
Idaho joins Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia in deciding on the future of abortion in their respective states, though legally they are often on very different sides of the issue and could swing further depending on the results of the vote in November.
Missouri, for example, is holding a referendum on an amendment to the state's Constitution that went into effect at the end of 2024. The law, known as The Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, allows access to abortion up to the point of fetal viability. This is the same benchmark at which Idaho's initiative is aiming.
Missouri's initiative, however, will challenge this relatively new law and, if successful, would ban abortion except in limited cases like medical emergency, fetal anomaly, rape, or incest. The initiative also limits abortions in these categories to 12 weeks into the pregnancy.
Also worth noting is that Missouri's initiative takes aim at so-called gender-affirming care, effectively banning gender transition surgeries and cross-sex hormones for minors.
Nevada's initiative has been years in the making. Nevada law requires the same ballot question to be voted on in two successive general elections to pass.
In 2024, State Question Number 6, which would establish "an individual's fundamental right to abortion" up to the point of fetal viability (with limited exceptions), passed and was placed on the ballot for the general election in 2026.
Virginia's ballot question, arguably the most extreme pro-abortion position of the four, will ask about protecting "reproductive freedom," shielding abortionists from punitive action, and allowing "for restrictions on access to abortion during the third trimester of pregnancy."
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The pro-life movement has seen a number of significant victories under President Donald Trump.
In less than six years, Trump has stopped U.S. tax dollars from funding groups that perform or promote abortions overseas, appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminated some federal funding to Planned Parenthood through Title X rule changes, protected doctors and nurses who didn’t want to participate in abortions, ended most government use of aborted fetal tissue for research, and pardoned several pro-life activists who had been arrested for protesting.
Despite these wins, many pro-lifers are frustrated with President Trump’s public stance on abortion. They criticize his treatment of the issue as a state concern instead of pushing for a strong national ban or more federal limits. They also feel he hasn’t done enough to stop widespread mail-order abortion pills and condemn his calls for “flexibility” on related policies.
While BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is fully on board with the pro-life movement, believing abortion is “the murder of a child in no certain terms” and “one of the most horrific things about our society,” he argues that many activists fail to see the reality of what the movement is up against.
On this episode of “The Auron MacIntyre Show,” the host argues that no amount of laws or Trump bans can fix the problem because the entire American system — its economy, workforce, and culture — is built on easy access to abortion.
While Auron sympathizes with the many pro-lifers who were dissatisfied with President Trump during his 2024 campaign for refusing to make big promises about abortion bans, he argues that Trump was wise to take a nuanced approach to such a deeply polarizing issue.
“Donald Trump knew that this was going to be very unpopular, and he just refused to run on it in the election. ... That makes political sense,” he admits.
Now that Trump is president, he continues to treat the issue of abortion exactly as he promised to treat it during his campaign, but many pro-lifers are nonetheless incensed.
As midterms draw nearer, pro-lifers are working to ban the abortion pill, but Auron says the timing of this initiative is unwise.
“Trump’s got enough problems with other optical issues going on — Iran, deportations, Epstein files, all that stuff. He doesn’t need another unpopular thing on his plate,” he argues, reiterating that he fully supports the pro-life movements’ initiatives in principle.
But practically, these initiatives aren’t working.
“The core issue is the state referendums. If the pro-life movement was winning at the state level after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, it wouldn’t need Trump to go out and do any of these things,” Auron explains.
“They’re doing the Lord’s work, ... a completely justified and righteous crusade. But you need to understand that if you’re losing consistently on the state level, something has happened,” he continues.
What has happened, he explains, is that abortion has become foundational in America since Roe v. Wade. What that landmark case did was “[create] an incentive structure that put abortion at the center of many of our economic and cultural systems and understandings.”
“We have made literal child sacrifice the center of our civilization,” he says bluntly.
It fueled the 1960s sexual revolution, which coincided with the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion, and turned sex from a risky behavior into a virtually consequence-free one, changing relationship dynamics between men and women, de-incentivizing marriage and family, and teeing women up to enter the workforce en masse.
“[Women in the workforce] has all kinds of huge benefits for employers. Corporations love working women. ... It basically doubles the labor pool,” Auron says.
Women also became huge money-savers for businesses because employers could not only pay women less than men to do the same job, but they could also pay men lower wages because the pressure to pay salaries that could provide for whole families suddenly vanished.
“Instead of getting one man doing the job that raised a family, you got a man and his wife both working for the same amount that just the man used to work for,” Auron says.
This shift also culminated in the need for more government. Before women entered the workforce, “Americans didn’t need a big government because women were at home, and they were building these associations, these connections, this social credit,” Auron says, “and so you didn’t have to have people step in and do all the things that women were doing.”
It also upped the nation’s GDP because all the work women were doing at home suddenly “[had] to get reterritorialized into the market.”
“When you move all of the female jobs, all of the female roles, all of the social capital that females were creating out of the economic zone and you move it into the economic zone, of course GDP goes up, line goes up, economic activity goes up because now there’s all these surrogates who have to do what women did when they were mothers,” Auron explains.
Abortion thus became a guarantee that the benefits of working women were locked in for corporations.
But the depth to which modern society is built upon the altar of abortion runs far deeper than that.
To hear Auron’s full breakdown, watch the episode above.
To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist's commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
A California doctor wants to create a floating abortion clinic in the Gulf of Mexico so that women in southern states can evade pro-life laws and obtain abortions at sea.
Dr. Meg Autry, an obstetrician and gynecologist with the University of California San Francisco, wants to set up an abortion clinic aboard a ship in federal waters, outside the jurisdiction of state laws banning abortion, where pregnant women can obtain first-trimester surgical abortions, contraception, and other medical care.
She has started a nonprofit group called PRROWESS — "Protecting Reproductive Rights Of Women Endangered by State Statutes" — to raise funds for her proposal, the Associated Press reports.
“There’s been an assault on reproductive rights in our country and I’m a lifelong advocate for reproductive health and choice. We have to create options and be thoughtful and creative to help people in restrictive states get the health care they deserve,” Autry said.
Her proposal is the latest scheme to undermine anti-abortion laws after the Supreme Court ruled that states have the power to regulate abortion, overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas have had abortion bans or restrictions take effect immediately after the court's decision. A 15-week abortion ban with exceptions for medical emergencies has similarly taken effect in Florida, though it was initially challenged in state court.
Autry told the Associated Press that PRROWESS' legal counsel believes there is a large area of federal waters where it would be legal to provide abortions outside the reach of state laws. She said that women in southern states may have an easier time boarding a boat and sailing to the floating abortion mill than traveling to another state where abortions are legal.
“This is closer and faster access for some people, particularly for working people that live in the southernmost part of these states,” she said.
Autry said that her organization is still determining where the clinic will launch and how women will get to the ship.
Democratic lawmakers have also pushed for the Biden administration to open up abortion clinics on federal lands to circumvent state abortion restrictions.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Occasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have separately suggested that the federal government could set up clinics in national parks where women could obtain abortions at taxpayer expense.
However, Vice President Kamala Harris shot down the idea of using federal lands for abortions in an interview in June. Instead, President Joe Biden signed an executive order last week directing his administration to protect access to self-administered abortion pills and guarantee the right of women to travel seeking abortions, among other actions.
Dozens of locally elected prosecutors from all over the country, many from Democratic areas within red states, are refusing to enforce abortion restrictions that have now been legalized following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
After the court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision Friday — permitting pro-life state legislatures to enact abortion restrictions — 90 elected prosecutors collectively representing more than 91.5 million people from 31 states and territories and the District of Columbia declared their intention to ignore pro-life laws restricting abortion, calling them "a mockery of justice."
"We stand together in our firm belief that prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions," the prosecutors said in a joint statement organized by Fair and Just Prosecution, a left-leaning legal nonprofit.
"As such, we decline to use our offices' resources to criminalize reproductive heath decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions," the statement reads.
The actions of these pro-abortion attorneys will escalate a growing conflict between liberal prosecutors who support abortion rights and pro-life state attorneys general and legislatures who, in accordance with the will of voters, enact restrictions on abortion.
Many of the prosecutors who signed on to the joint statement are from 12 states where abortion is now banned or likely to be banned, including Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and others. They argue that prosecutorial discretion permits them to prioritize other crimes instead of pursuing cases against abortion providers.
Pro-life advocates harshly criticized their position. James Bopp Jr., the general counsel of the National Right to Life Committee, said the prosecutors' statement was "anti-democratic" in a statement to CNN. His organization has published model legislation for pro-life lawmakers that would enable state attorneys general to take up abortion cases when local prosecutors refuse to do so.
"They were not elected to decide what the law was," Bopp told CNN. "If they don't want to enforce these laws, then we'll have somebody else do it."
Some state attorneys general already possess the power to override local prosecutors. Alabama and Arizona are two states, among others, where the attorney general holds the power to supersede local prosecutors for any reason, according to Emory Law Journal. They each have elected Republican attorneys general and have laws banning abortion that may take effect after the Supreme Court's decision.
Florida, Michigan, and several other states give broad powers to state officials to override local prosecutors when they deem it to be in the public interest, Politico reported.
Republicans have criticized the abuse of prosecutorial discretion by Democratic prosecutors.
"We have no doubt they are sincere in their pledge to not do their jobs," a spokeswoman for Georgia attorney general Chris Carr told the Center Square after local district attorneys said they would not enforce the state's heartbeat bill.
"It's a dereliction of duty for district attorneys and solicitors to pre-emptively pick and choose which laws they will enforce," Carr spokeswoman Kara Richardson said. "It undermines the rule of law and erodes our system of self-governance."
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