Idaho’s “Life” Story

The protection of life was engrained in the very substance from which America was formed long before our birth. When the founders gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776, they didn’t just declare independence from a distant crown — they grounded their case in self-evident truth: that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life came first. Surely, this was no accident.

Respect for the sanctity of life was inherent in American law and medicine. The Hippocratic Oath, first penned around 400 BC, contained prohibitions on abortion and euthanasia, and was widely accepted as fundamental in Western medicine for centuries. With the moral case already firmly established, organized medicine made the scientific case beginning in the mid-1800s: human life begins at fertilization.

The American Medical Association was among the most vocal advocates for that truth. This was not a religious argument — it was a scientific one, advanced by physicians who understood that the moment of conception marks the beginning of a distinct human life deserving of legal protection. The AMA’s campaign was instrumental in the enactment of pro-life statutes across the country throughout the latter half of the 19th century. Those laws were understood as life-saving measures, protecting both mother and child.

Idaho was no different.

When the first Idaho Territorial Legislature convened at Lewiston on December 7, 1863, eighteen men faced the task of building a civilization from the ground up. Among the most urgent was the adoption of a comprehensive criminal code — a body of law expressing what the people of this new territory believed about right and wrong, human dignity, and the obligations of a just society.

Drawing from the established criminal codes of California and Nevada, the lawmakers adopted an omnibus penal package that Governor William H. Wallace signed without recorded objection. Idaho had not yet achieved statehood — it would not for another quarter century. But from its very first days as an organized territory, Idaho declared in law what its people already knew in conscience: that the destruction of innocent life was a criminal act.

Section 42 of that 1864 criminal code imposed imprisonment of not less than two nor more than five years on any person who administered substances or used instruments with the intention of ending a pregnancy. The sole exception was the same one that physicians and lawmakers across the country recognized as essential: a doctor acting in the discharge of professional duties who deemed the procedure necessary to save the life of the mother. 

Even this exception was a precise expression of the legislature’s overarching purpose. The law existed to protect life — the life of both the unborn child and the mother. Medicine’s role was to save patients, not to end lives. Formal prosecutions under Section 42 were rare, because the law’s primary function was declaration, not enforcement: a civilized society protects its most vulnerable members. This was not a fringe view. It was the overwhelming consensus of the era — shared across states and territories, grounded in medical science, and consistent with our founding conviction that life is the first among unalienable rights.

Idaho has carried that conviction forward through every generation since. When the Supreme Court returned the question of abortion to the states in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, Idaho did not hesitate to restore the protections that have always reflected its values. And when the federal government attempted to override those protections — misusing federal law to compel Idaho physicians to perform abortions in violation of state statute — Idaho’s Attorney General went to the Supreme Court to defend them. The argument made in that courtroom was the same one made by those eighteen men in Lewiston in 1863, and by the founders in Philadelphia in 1776: life is not a policy preference. It is the first right. And it is worth defending.

Now, in 2026, Idahoans face a radical pro-abortion ballot initiative that would fundamentally alter our cultural and legal fabric, enshrining an unlimited “right” to abortion in Idaho law. This is not progress. It is a repudiation of Idaho’s oldest and most deeply held convictions regarding the meaning of humanity and civilization.

Idaho’s “Life” story did not begin in 2022 with Dobbs. It is a self-evident truth articulated at our founding — of this territory, and of this nation. That truth is worth knowing. And it is worth defending.