Federal court divided over Idaho’s abortion ban and emergency care fight

The Biden administration’s challenge to Idaho’s strict abortion ban divided a federal appeals court that heard arguments Tuesday in an emergency abortion care case that has already reached the Supreme Court once.

The Biden administration’s challenge to Idaho’s strict abortion ban divided a federal appeals court that heard arguments Tuesday in an emergency abortion care case that has already reached the Supreme Court once. Multiple judges on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals raised the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration would drop the case. John Bursch, an attorney for Idaho who was urging the appeals court to lift a preliminary order pausing aspects of the state’s ban, said it wasn’t clear what the Trump Justice Department would do and that courts shouldn’t just wait in such an “uncertain” situation. An attorney for St. Luke’s, a large medical system in the state that is supporting the administration as a so-called friend of the court, suggested the hospital might seek to keep the lawsuit alive if the Trump DOJ drops the suit. Several judges on the appeals court appeared inclined to leave the order in place and return the case to the trial court for additional proceedings. However, at least a handful of the judges – most of them appointees of Trump – expressed skepticism of the Biden administration’s arguments. The Biden administration claims that federally funded hospitals are obligated to provide abortions when pregnancy complications are jeopardizing a woman’s life or her health, even in states that prohibit the procedure. Idaho’s abortion ban – which was partially blocked and reinstated multiple times over the course of the litigation – has an exemption for when a woman’s life is at risk, but not for when her health is imperiled in a way that stops short of being life-threatening.