The state of Idaho is fighting back against Joe Biden’s attempt to wrap and twist a federal law into a mandate that emergency rooms must double as abortion clinics.
As LifeNews.com has reported, Idaho asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the Biden administration from blocking Idaho’s abortion ban that saves babies from abortions.
The Biden administration claims to have discovered a new power in the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a law that President Ronald Reagan signed, to require doctors to perform certain abortions in violation of many states’ pro-life laws. But Biden is misusing the law in the attempt to override state abortion bans and falsely declare all abortions as medical emergnecies.
Today, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador filed a brief for Idaho, assisted by attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom and Cooper & Kirk, with the U.S. Supreme Court in State of Idaho v. United States of America.
He told LifeNews:
“Idaho’s Defense of Life Act is perfectly consistent with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which provides explicit protections for ‘unborn children’ in four separate places. But the Biden administration is trying to use one life-affirming law to invalidate another. The administration’s radical interpretation of federal law is nothing more than a reckless disregard for Idaho’s right to protect life. We are asking the Supreme Court to end the administration’s unlawful overreach and to respect the people of Idaho’s decision to safeguard the lives of women and their unborn children.”
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Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch agreed.
“The Biden administration has no authority to override Idaho’s law and force emergency room doctors to perform abortions. There is no conflict between Idaho’s Defense of Life Act and EMTALA. Both Idaho’s law and EMTALA seek to protect the lives of women and their unborn children. The Supreme Court should end the Biden administration’s lawlessness and uphold Idaho’s rightful authority to protect life,” he said.
Sen. John Kennedy, who filed an amicus brief supporting the state, also agrees.
“The Biden administration’s case against Idaho’s Defense of Life Act is the president’s latest scheme to force his radical pro-abortion ideology on all Americans. Idaho requires doctors to protect the lives of mothers and their unborn children, and there’s no legal basis for the Biden administration to try to overrule a law that Idahoans passed democratically,” said Kennedy.
“Idahoans have passed a strong law to protect the lives of mothers and the unborn, yet the Biden administration is seeking every opportunity to expand abortion. This administration cherrypicked pieces of existing statute and wrongfully reinterpreted it to fit their agenda. Their manipulation of federal law cannot usurp state law, and there is no federal right to an abortion. This amicus brief demonstrates how the administration’s substantial federal overreach is aimed at undermining pro-life protections not only in Idaho but around the nation,” said Risch.
EMTALA requires hospitals to provide necessary stabilizing treatment to patients before transferring them to another hospital because of the patient’s inability to pay.
The Biden administration claims that EMTALA overrides pro-life state laws and requires doctors to perform abortions in some circumstances. However, the lawmakers’ amicus brief argues that EMTALA says nothing about abortion and actually requires doctors to provide treatment to both a mother and her unborn child.
Last year the Justice Department filed a lawsuit that challenges Idaho’s protective law — arguing that it would prevent medically necessary abortions. Despite false reports that abortion bans would prevent doctors from treating pregnant women for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, pro-life doctors confirm that is not the case. Some 35 states have laws making it clear that miscarriage is not abortion and every state with an abortion ban allows treatment for both.
The federal government brought the suit seeking to invalidate the state’s “criminal prohibition on providing abortions as applied to women suffering medical emergencies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. It’s the first lawsuit the Biden administration has brought in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Biden hopes to turn emergency rooms in the state in abortion centers.
On behalf of the state of Idaho, attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom and Cooper & Kirk assisted the Idaho Attorney General’s office in filing an emergency application for stay pending appeal Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court in State of Idaho v. United States of America. The case involves the Biden administration’s unlawful attempt to use a law that ensures indigent patients receive emergency room care to force doctors to perform abortions that are illegal under Idaho law.
The motion asks the nation’s high court to immediately halt the 9th Circuit’s ruling holding that the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act preempts Idaho’s Defense of Life Act. Idaho’s pro-life law imposes penalties on physicians who perform prohibited abortions unless doing so is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman or other exceptions apply. The federal government claims—and the lower court ruled—that EMTALA requires abortions in violation of this law if an emergency room doctor thinks it is appropriate.
“Hospitals—especially emergency rooms—are centers for preserving life. The government has no business transforming them into abortion clinics,” said ADF Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, vice president of the Center for Life and regulatory practice. “Emergency room physicians can, and do, treat ectopic pregnancies and other life-threatening conditions. But elective abortion is not life-saving care—it ends the life of the unborn child—and the government has no authority to override Idaho’s law barring these procedures. We urge the Supreme Court to halt the lower court’s injunction and allow Idaho emergency rooms to fulfill their primary function—saving lives.”
After the Supreme Court returned the issue of abortion to the states in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the federal government sued the state of Idaho, claiming that EMTALA, an ancillary provision of the Medicare statute, preempts Idaho’s pro-life law. But as explained in the emergency application, “EMTALA is silent on abortion and actually requires stabilizing treatment for the unborn children of pregnant women.”
“The United States’ position conflicts with the universal agreement of federal courts of appeal that EMTALA does not dictate a federal standard of care or displace state medical standards. The district court accepted the United States’ revisionist, post-Dobbs reading of EMTALA and enjoined Idaho’s Defense of Life Act in emergency rooms. The district court’s injunction effectively turns EMTALA’s protection for the uninsured into a federal super-statute on the issue of abortion, one that strips Idaho of its sovereign interest in protecting innocent, human life and turns emergency rooms into a federal enclave where state standards of care do not apply,” the application further notes.
ADF attorneys are litigating a similar case in Texas that is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. In that case, State of Texas v. Becerra, a district court in Texas blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to force emergency rooms doctors to perform elective abortions.
Idaho’s abortion ban permits a physician who does an abortion to raise the affirmative defense that the abortion was necessary to save the mother’s life or that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest that was reported. In both cases, the physician must choose a procedure that is most likely to save the life of the baby and protect the mother. The law explicitly excludes contraception from the definition of abortion, and women upon whom abortions are performed may not be prosecuted.
The pro-life laws in Idaho and other states include clearly defined exceptions that allow abortions in the cases when a mother’s life is at risk. Because the pro-life movement cares about the lives of both mother and child and there are rare cases in which only the mother’s life can be saved, it supports such exceptions.
But these exceptions mean the Biden administration’s guidance is unnecessary. Undermining Idaho’s life-saving efforts and expanding abortions appear to be the administration’s real goal.
