WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday moved to drop an emergency abortion case in Idaho 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, in a reversal that could have national implications for urgent care.
The lawsuit had argued that emergency-room doctors treating pregnant women had to provide terminations if needed to save their lives or to avoid serious health consequences in Idaho, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.
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. The state agrees with the dismissal, so it does not need judicial approval, Justice Department attorneys wrote in court documents.
Idaho doctors, meanwhile, say it remains unclear which abortion are legal, forcing them to airlift pregnant women of state if a termination might be part of the standard of care. It’s often unclear in fast-moving emergencies whether pregnancy complications could ultimately prove fatal, doctors said in court documents.
A judge has blocked Idaho from any abortion ban enforcement that would change emergency treatment at the state’s largest hospital system for now.
In his first term, Trump, a Republican, appointed many of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturned the constitutional right to abortion. He has since said the issue should be left to the states.
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.
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.
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.
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.
