The policy center on Aug. 3 posted a graph on Facebook showing the number of active licenses increasing from 2022 to 2025, writing “Pro-abortion advocates are lying to you.”

“The number of actively licensed OB/GYNs in Idaho has actually increased since our pro-life laws went into effect, according to data from the Idaho Board of Medicine,” the post said.

The center’s posts about the licensure numbers have been shared by Idaho state legislators, such as Twin Falls Republican Rep. Clint Hostetler and Middleton Republican Rep. Tammy Nichols.

Family policy center President Blaine Conzatti wrote on the organization’s website, noting that the data from the Board of Medicine is “admittedly imperfect,” citing many of the same limitations [DOPL spokesperson Bob McLaughlin] named, including that not all physicians practice in states where their license is active and that specialties are self-reported.

“Even still, it’s the best data available,” Conzatti wrote. “And it clearly shows that the number of Idaho OB/GYNs hasn’t been decreasing at the rate that JAMA article researchers – and their boosters in the media – have been telling you.”

The 2025 [JAMA] study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that Idaho experienced a net loss of 94 out of 264 OB-GYN physicians between August 2022 and December 2024.

Conzatti told the Sun in an email, that while he knows there are limitations to the licensing data, he questions the JAMA study data.

“We’ve acknowledged from the beginning that the data on actively licensed physicians doesn’t tell the whole story,” he said. “… That being said, we’re willing to bet that the state board data is [more] reliable for our purposes here than the JAMA report for a handful of reasons.”

He said one of the reasons is the data from the study provided to the policy center from the records request shows two counties with negative total OB-GYNs.

“That’s impossible—and errors in a data set skew the results,” Conzatti said of the negative doctor counts. “These errors also lead us to question the reliability of the other data relied upon in the report. Unfortunately, because BSU has not complied with our public record request to release the underlying data, communications, and review documents, we can’t thoroughly vet the JAMA report to determine if other data errors exist.”

He also questioned the methodology used by the researchers to collect the data.

“From what we can gather, the authors of the report determined whether a doctor had left based in part on internet searches and asking friends, neither of which are known as robustly scientific processes,” Conzatti said. “Unfortunately, because the authors have still not released their full report and have refused to release the documents we requested, we don’t have further insight into the usefulness of the method and the findings of the study.”

The policy center filed its lawsuit against Boise State University in Ada County District Court on July 24, Idaho EdNews reported.

Conzatti said in the family policy center post announcing the legal challenge that the biggest question for them remained unanswered, “Are OB/GYNs actually leaving the state, as the JAMA study claims? Or is the number of OB/GYNs practicing in Idaho actually increasing, as the data from the Idaho Board of Medicine seems to indicate?”

“This lawsuit means that we’ll finally get the answers,” Conzatti wrote. “And with the upcoming abortion ballot initiative, the need for accurate information has never been more crucial.”