The Biden administration had challenged parts of Idaho’s abortion ban, which was set to take effect Thursday, under a law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which establishes emergency care requirements for certain health care providers. Winmill said Wednesday that the Justice Department was likely to succeed in its argument that Idaho’s abortion ban criminalized the abortion care that doctors are required to provide in medical emergencies under EMTALA. “In short, given the extremely broad scope of Idaho Code § 18-622, neither the State nor the Legislature has convinced the Court that it is possible for health care workers to simultaneously comply with their obligations under the statute EMTALA and Idaho law,” the judge wrote. “State law must therefore yield to federal law to the extent of that conflict.” The Idaho attorney general’s office declined to comment Wednesday when asked by CNN if it planned to appeal the order. The exemption that Idaho’s abortion ban offers for medical emergencies is among the narrowest in the country. It applies only when the provider believes the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman, not allowing abortions for other serious health risks addressed by EMTALA. And the law does not exempt providers who offer this emergency care from being charged with a crime. rather it allows them to raise that justification as an affirmative defense at trial. “When abortion is the necessary life-sustaining treatment, EMTALA directs physicians to provide care if they reasonably expect that the patient’s condition will result in serious impairment of bodily functions, serious dysfunction of any organ or part of the body, or serious risk to the patient’s health. ” the judge wrote. “In contrast, the criminal abortion statute admits of no such exception. It only justifies abortions that the attending physician determines are necessary to prevent the patient’s death.” The order is a victory for the Biden administration, which has had few tools at its disposal to respond to the Supreme Court’s June reversal of Roe v. Wade’s federal protections for abortion rights. “Today’s decision by the District Court for the District of Idaho ensures that women in the State of Idaho can receive the emergency medical care they are entitled to under federal law. This includes abortion when that is the necessary treatment,” said Atty. District Attorney Merrick Garland said in a statement Wednesday. In a dueling case out of Texas, a federal judge rejected the administration’s interpretation of EMTALA as requiring abortion care to be a medical emergency. In that case, the judge issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday night against the administration, preventing it from enforcing EMTALA that way in Texas, and against a doctors’ organization that joined Texas to challenge the administration’s policy. This story has been updated with additional details on Wednesday.
