WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Wednesday moved to drop an Idaho emergency abortion case in one of its first moves on the issue since President Donald Trump began his second term.
The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which was originally filed by the Biden administration, and allow Idaho to fully enforce its strict abortion ban even during emergency situations.
A judge quickly blocked that enforcement, though, after doctors said it could force them to airlift women to other states to get standard critical care without the risk of running afoul of the law.
The Biden administration had argued that emergency-room doctors treating pregnant women must to provide terminations if necessary in Idaho, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.
The case could have nationwide implications, since the Democratic administration had given similar guidance to hospitals nationwide in the wake of the Supreme Court 2022 decision overturning the right to abortion. It’s being challenged in other conservative states.
In Idaho, the state argued that its law does allow life-saving abortions and the Biden administration wrongly sought to expand the exceptions.
The original lawsuit always relied on an incorrect interpretation of federal health care law, said Katie Daniel, director of legal Affairs and policy counsel at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Daniel also said that women wouldn’t be barred from emergency care with the ban in place.
Idaho doctors, meanwhile, say it’s often unclear in fast-moving emergencies whether pregnancy complications could ultimately prove fatal and allow a legal abortion under ban, doctors said.
Numerous doctors in the state – including some who oppose elective abortion – have told said “Damocles’ sword hangs over them all the time,” said McKay Cunningham, a professor of reproductive rights and constitutional law at the College of Idaho.
St. Luke’s Health System, the state’s largest, said it airlifted six patients out of state to treat medical emergencies when the ban was in force between January and April 2024. Only one needed similar treatment in all of 2023.
Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked after the overturning of Roe v. Wade amid questions about what care hospitals could legally provide, federal records showed.
In his first term, Trump appointed many of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturned the constitutional right to abortion. The Republican has since said the issue should be left to the states.
The Supreme Court stepped into the Idaho case last year. It ultimately handed down a narrow ruling that allowed hospitals to keep making determinations about emergency pregnancy terminations but left key legal questions unresolved.
The case went before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December. Those judges have not yet ruled.
About 50,000 people in the U.S. develop life-threatening pregnancy complications each year, including major blood loss, sepsis or the loss of reproductive organs. In rare cases, doctors might need to terminate a pregnancy to protect the health of the pregnant person, especially in cases where there is no chance for a fetus to survive.
Most Republican-controlled states have started enforcing new bans or restrictions since 2022. Currently, 12 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy — often before women realize they’re pregnant.
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Boone reported from Boise. Associated Press Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed from Louisville, Kentucky.
