BOISE, Idaho — With just a few weeks to go before Election Day, opponents of expanding Idahoans’ access to abortion are turning up the heat.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Thursday donated $1 million to the campaign against Proposition 1, a citizens initiative on the November ballot that would expand abortion access. The next day, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise donated $300,000, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Sunshine website.

“While The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remains neutral toward political candidates, it actively addresses ballot initiatives it believes carry significant moral consequences,” according to a statement from the LDS church. “Accordingly, the Church has joined a coalition of like-minded organizations and individuals in Idaho to dedicate resources toward defeating Proposition 1.”

Brian Whitlock, a spokesperson for the church, told the Idaho Statesman on Monday he wasn’t authorized by the church to expand on the statement.

Marco Roman, a spokesperson for the Boise Diocese, on Monday shared a statement explaining its decision to donate to oppose Prop. 1.

“Our participation reflects the Church’s responsibility to advance a just moral order that upholds the dignity of every human person, promotes the common good, and protects the most innocent and vulnerable among us — especially unborn children whose lives are ended by abortion — while affirming the dignity of mothers and the care and support they deserve,” the statement reads.

In September, the LDS church stated its opposition to Prop. 1 in a letter that was read on two different days in all of its congregations, Whitlock said. The brief letter links to the church’s “long-held stance” on abortion, which shares the church’s belief in the “sanctity of human life” and opposition to “elective abortion for personal or social convenience.”

The church’s stance allows for “possible exceptions” when a pregnancy results from rape or incest, when a mother’s life is in jeopardy, or a physician determines that the fetus will not be able to survive beyond birth.

Prop. 1 campaign warned of ‘green light’ for undisclosed donations

The LDS church’s contribution to Too Extreme for Idaho, the political action committee leading the campaign to oppose Prop. 1, is the largest single donation that committee has received — though one couple connected with Catholic charities previously gave two donations that added up to the same amount. The Diocese’s contribution is the fourth-largest, according to the Sunshine site.

Those contributions come about a month after Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador issued an official opinion that a “nonbusiness entity” church that spends more than $1,000 on a ballot initiative as an exercise of its religious beliefs does not have to disclose its donors’ identity.

That decision “was basically the green light for undisclosed money to flow in” from religious institutions that opposed the initiative, said Melanie Folwell, the executive director of Idaho United for Women and Families, the political action committee leading the campaign for Prop. 1.

On Monday, she told the Statesman that the churches’ large donations were “precisely” what she had been warning about.

Those institutions have “massive” operating budgets, she said. “We are disproportionately, wildly outflanked from that standpoint,” she added.

As of Monday, Idahoans United for Women and Families was still ahead on funding: It has raised about $5.6 million compared with Too Extreme For Idaho’s $4 million.

In late September, the campaign to support Prop. 1 received nearly $2 million in donations, much of which came from prominent progressive donors and political action committees outside of Idaho, the Statesman previously reported.

But those out-of-state donations were a new phenomenon, Folwell said at the time. Up until then, her campaign had relied almost exclusively on small, in-state donations. It has received nearly 7,500 individual donations, compared with Too Extreme For Idaho’s approximately 260 donations.

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