When Ann Lima goes into work at her clinic, she knows she'll be treating patients with a range of unique health care needs. She'll rely on phone calls with specialists, and she'll do her best to stay up to date on the broad scope of issues she may encounter.

Physicians and other medical professionals have come together to form the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare, seeking to reverse Idaho’s anti-medicine laws and stem the tide of doctors fleeing the state.

And plenty of doctors are staying put, working to continue caring for their patients and navigating the fear and confusion created by the state legislature as best they can—though that doesn’t mean they aren’t struggling.

“All told, more than a dozen labor and delivery doctors — including five of Idaho’s nine longtime maternal-fetal experts — will have either left or retired by the end of this year. Dr. Gustafson says the departures have made a bad situation worse, depriving both patients and doctors of moral support and medical advice.”

The state of Idaho is in the beginning stages of a grand exodus. Doctors – specifically, those who care for pregnant women and perform abortions – are fleeing the state due to new abortion restrictions.

As a physician in Idaho, watching the 2023 legislative session was perplexing.

Most health care-related bills have focused on restricting instead of improving access to care. These have emerged under the guise of protecting families and cutting unnecessary expenses, however, as a medical professional trained to care for the medical needs of Idaho families, I would argue that most of what we saw will not improve health outcomes.

A recent survey asks how Idaho's abortion laws are affecting the state’s maternal healthcare doctors and the results are concerning, especially for women considering pregnancy.

Abortion bans across the country are forcing medical providers to choose between their obligation to their patients or possible lawsuits, loss of licenses and incarceration.

“How close to death you need to be before you can intervene? How close to death before you can act?" Dr. Miller told KTVB. "We shouldn't just be talking about preventing death. That is not what we do as healthcare providers. We maintain the health of our patients. Sometimes, unfortunately, termination of pregnancy is part of that conversation. It is the way to maintain a woman's health."