Can Idaho lawmakers bar children, pregnant women from getting COVID-19 vaccine?

Sarah Cutler, The Idaho Statesman on Mar 5, 2026

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BOISE, Idaho — Idaho leaders are vocal about the importance of preserving residents’ “medical freedom”: the ability to make their own decisions about their health, free from government mandates or interference.

In the final days of the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers pushed past an initial veto by Gov. Brad Little to get his sign-off on a measure that banned businesses, including day cares, from requiring medical interventions, including vaccines and masks.

But on Wednesday, they took a very different approach.

Sen. Brandon Shippy, R-New Plymouth, proposed a bill that would bar children and pregnant women in Idaho from getting mRNA vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, for the next two years. A two-year “moratorium” on administering the vaccine would allow time for state lawmakers to review “available safety data” about the vaccine, according to the bill’s statement of purpose.

Such a ban, if signed into law, would infringe on pregnant patients’ medical freedom, and on parents’ right to choose their children’s medical treatment, Susie Keller, the head of the Idaho Medical Association, told the Idaho Statesman.

“Idaho physicians are very, very concerned about this legislation,” which would “take away desired and chosen therapies from people who want it for themselves or for their children,” she said.

“I think it very inappropriately puts the Legislature in the position of deciding which FDA-approved therapies Idaho patients can have, even if their physician thinks that that’s right for them and the patient chooses” to use it,” she added.

The bill would for the first time insert the Legislature — which is composed of laypeople, not medical experts, Keller noted — as a body responsible for approving which vaccines, drugs or treatments Idahoans can access.

The bill takes aim at “certain human gene therapy products,” though it excepts gene therapies for cancer and genetic disorders. Vaccines that use mRNA technology are not gene therapy, retired physician Dr. David Pate, the former CEO of St. Luke’s Health System, told the Statesman in 2025.

Shippy pushed back on the idea that such a move would be unprecedented. He compared barring the administration of mRNA COVID vaccines with banning pregnant women from using meth.

“The Idaho Legislature has also said that parents can’t allow their young children to have cigarettes, nor put beer in their sippy cup for them to drink, because it’s not healthy for them,” Shippy told the Statesman by email. “It is not unprecedented for the Idaho (Legislature) to take actions based on available safety data.”

Keller questioned a premise of the Shippy’s bill — that the COVID vaccine had not received a full review because of its emergency use during the pandemic, so Idaho lawmakers needed to fill in the gap during what Shippy called a “prudent pause.” Several testifiers on Thursday raised concerns about the vaccine’s safety.

It’s true, Keller said, that mRNA vaccines were originally granted an “emergency-use authorization” in late 2020, but the Food and Drug Administration has since completed its full review of the drugs’ safety — in mid-2021 for the Pfizer vaccine and in early 2022 for the Moderna vaccine.

“Those vaccines are fully FDA-approved and went through the complete, full process,” Keller said.

In 2025, Shippy unsuccessfully proposed a broader version of the same bill, which called for a decade-long pause in administering the mRNA COVID vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna. On Wednesday, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted to send Shippy’s bill to the Senate floor for amendments.

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