The Trump administration moved Wednesday to drop the Justice Department’s challenge to an Idaho law restricting and criminalizing abortions with exceptions for rape and life of the mother.
The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the case Wednesday, ending the Biden administration’s years-long challenge to Idaho’s Defense of Life Act under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, a federal law requiring Medicare hospitals to provide emergency services regardless of patients’ ability to pay.
It marks one of the first abortion policy moves of Trump’s presidency after Trump took a moderate approach to the issue during his campaign. Trump has deferred the issue to states and come out in favor of the abortion pill, an increasingly popular method for terminating pregnancies.
“As a board-certified ob-gyn for over 30 years, the administration’s change in stance is welcome news for both of my patients—a pregnant woman and her unborn child—whose lives are both prioritized by EMTALA,” said Ingrid Skop, vice president at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute.
“This coercive effort by the prior administration to subvert existing laws to promote abortion was never necessary, as EMTALA has never been confusing for me or my obstetric peers. Every state pro-life law already permitted physicians to intervene immediately in a pregnancy emergency to protect a woman’s life.”
The Biden administration’s lawsuit argued that emergency room doctors in Idaho had to be able to provide abortions in cases where the mother’s life was at risk or to avoid serious health problems. Meanwhile, Idaho argued that its abortion ban already includes an exception for life of the mother, and that the Biden administration was trying to expand its exceptions.
Nowhere in the EMTALA is abortion mentioned, but the law does specifically require hospitals to provide care for mothers and their unborn children.
“Idaho’s Defense of Life Act protecting babies and their mothers throughout pregnancy was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2023. There is no conflict between Idaho’s law and federal law, which never mentions abortion but specifically mentions several times that the ‘unborn child’ is also a patient any time a pregnant woman comes to the emergency room,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony pro-life, a prominent pro-life group.
“Idaho’s law protects more than 1,500 babies a year, and like every pro-life law in the country, nothing in it stops pregnant women from receiving emergency medical care. This care is absolutely legal.”
St. Luke’s health system, Idaho’s largest, said in Tuesday court filings that the Justice Department was prepared to dismiss the case and asked for immediate relief from a federal judge. For now, the judge is blocking Idaho from enforcing the abortion ban in ways that would alter emergency treatment in the hospital system.
Idaho’s pro-life law went into effect in August 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, sending abortion legalization back to states to decide. Idaho is one of numerous Republican-led states to enact abortion restrictions to protect the unborn following the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The Supreme Court punted last year on Idaho’s abortion case, sending it back to the Ninth Circuit for further litigation. As a result, emergency room doctors were still able to perform abortions in non-life threatening cases, even in red states with abortion bans.