Latter-day Saint leaders publicly picked a side this week in a state ballot measure, issuing a statement opposing Idaho’s Proposition 1, which seeks to expand abortion access.

The question now is how much it matters for the fate of the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act Initiative, generally viewed before Thursday’s news to have a shot at passing.

According to researchers familiar with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the answer is: perhaps on the margins.

But margins may be all the opponents need.

Getting out the vote

Quin Monson, a political scientist at church-owned Brigham Young University, has spent years studying Latter-day Saint political views and voting behaviors, including about issues on which the faith has taken clear stances.

[Read more about the church’s position against the Idaho measure.]

Long story short, he said, when the church “makes a public, clear endorsement of a political position, it is very likely to move church members toward that position as a group.”

And this new statement — which reads “the church opposes this initiative” and comes from the faith’s U.S. Central Area Presidency — is nothing if not clear.

Add to that the fact that lay clergy have been instructed to read it over the pulpit during worship services the next two Sundays and, Monson said, “it has the potential to solidify” opposition among the rank and file and “maybe to encourage some turnout.”

Still, no wild swings may take place. After all, an estimated nearly 7 in 10 Latter-day Saints believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, meaning many likely already opposed the measure. But there would be a decline in fence-sitters.

Sam Martin, political communication professor for Boise State University’s Frank Church Institute, offered a similar assessment, adding: “In a close election, effects around the margins can still matter.”

Polling and predictions

Public polling on the proposition is limited. But Boise State researchers found voters supported it by as much as 10 percentage points in January before a wave of advertising from both sides took hold.

The church claims nearly half a million members and more than 1,300 congregations in the state of 2 million people.

Of those, University of Tampa sociologist Ryan Cragun said, somewhere around two-thirds to three-fourths of active members identify as conservative or Republican.

Assuming the Boise State poll still holds, Cragun predicts that the proposition passes.

“Best-case scenario for the church and the opposition to Proposition 1,” he said, “is the church’s statement convinces the roughly quarter or more moderate-to-progressive Mormons to oppose Proposition 1.”

And that, Cragun estimates, is short of the votes needed to overcome the roughly 10 percentage points needed to sink the initiative.

The wild card

As squeamish as Latter-day Saints are about abortion, few fall into the anti-abortion absolutist camp.

In the same Pew Research Center survey that uncovered the 7-in-10 ratio, only 5% said it should be illegal in all cases. And a 2024 study of Utah Latter-day Saints found that a quarter favored leaving the decision to a woman and her doctor.

Idaho’s current abortion laws, meanwhile, are some of the strictest in the nation, going further in some instances than the church’s policy.

While the global faith condemns “elective abortion for personal or social convenience,” it allows exceptions if:

• A pregnancy results from rape or incest

• The “life or health” of the mother is in “serious jeopardy.”

• A fetus is found to have “severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.”

Idaho law does not provide exemptions in the case of the latter. Also, while it permits residents to terminate pregnancies resulting from rape and incest, those individuals must do so in their first trimester and only if they have reported the crime to law enforcement. Finally, the state does not currently allow for abortions performed to safeguard the mother’s health, only her life — a difficult distinction that has led to a jump in the number of women experiencing severe pregnancy complications being airlifted to other states.

Even so, Proposition 1 would go well beyond the church’s allowances, legalizing abortion regardless of reason well into the second trimester.

Given this, Martin said, the voters “worth watching” are Latter-day Saints who, while personally opposed to abortion, are uncomfortable with the outcomes of the current law.

“The church’s opposition,” she said, “may provide an important cue for voters who feel cross-pressured between those two positions.”