News on Law

• event August 16, 2022
• person Caldwell Elvis
• local_offer Law

Judge in Texas blocks Biden administration emergency abortion guidance

A federal judge in Texas blocked the Biden administration late on Tuesday from enforcing new guidance in the Republican-led state requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions to women regardless of state bans on the procedure.

U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock agreed with Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' guidance was unauthorized and went beyond the text of a related federal law.

At a hearing, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise echoed the administration's concerns that the Idaho law, which takes effect Thursday, could discourage doctors from offering emergency abortions as required by federal law to pregnant women facing the risk of death or serious injury.

The Biden administration's lawsuit, filed on Aug. 2, argues Idaho's near-total ban would infringe on the rights women have to emergency medical care at hospitals under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act

While the Idaho law allows for abortions to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, Winmill noted it did so only by allowing doctors who are prosecuted under the law to argue at trial that they had a good faith basis to believe that the patient's life was in danger.

Monte Stewart, a lawyer for the state's Republican-led legislature, argued prosecutors were unlikely to bring such a case in the "real world." But Winmill said the fact that prosecution was unlikely was little comfort to doctors.

It would be the rare situation where a doctor is willing or anxious to push the limits and go right up to the edge of what is allowed under the Idaho abortion statute," said Winmill, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton.