WASHINGTON – 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.
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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. During an emergency hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill called the Justice Department's sudden move a “ticking time bomb” for the Idaho hospital system that recently brought its own lawsuit in an effort to keep the legal claims alive.
The Biden administration had argued that emergency-room doctors must provide terminations if necessary to stabilize pregnant women 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 with an incorrect interpretation of federal law.
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.
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.
“These are parents that want to have these children, and they are experiencing perhaps the worst day of their lives, a horrible health emergency,” said Lindsay Harrison, one of the the attorneys representing St. Luke’s Health System.
The time served as a “natural experiment,” illustrating the irreparable harm that occurs when doctors are forced to choose between federal law and a state abortion ban, Harrison told the judge.
Idaho Deputy Attorney General Brian Church said the fact that all the patients made it to out-of-state hospitals shows there is no conflict between federal law and Idaho's abortion ban.
“There is no medical situation in which it is necessary to do an abortion as stabilizing care,” Church said. He later continued, “They basically admit that they have not yet encountered a situation where a patient presented in an ER and they were not able to stabilize for transfer.”
Winmill seemed skeptical of that claim, noting that Church lacks a “doctor's degree.”
“Are we to substitute the attorney general's judgement on that issue over what the doctors decided?” Winmill asked.
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 overturn the constitutional right to abortion. The Republican has since said the issue should be left to the states.
Dropping the lawsuit is “a big win for unborn children in Idaho, for women and for the truth,” said Kelsey Pritchard, political affairs communications director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
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, and the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case.
“The administration choosing to walk away is just completely outrageous and really heartbreaking for the women of this country,” said Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation. “This case does have far-reaching impact.”
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.
Severe complications where an abortion might be necessary to save a woman's health or life include certain placenta-related conditions, preeclampsia or eclampsia, and heart or kidney conditions, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
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.