Update 3/7/2025: Following the Trump Department of Justice’s (DOJ) announcement that it intends to drop a lawsuit brought against Idaho by the Biden DOJ regarding so-called “emergency” abortions, St. Luke’s hospital brought a similar suit against Idaho’s attorney general.
The original Biden DOJ lawsuit argued that Idaho’s pro-life law conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires that hospitals receiving federal funds provide stabilizing care to patients in emergency situations. The Bideo DOJ claimed, erroneously, that for pregnant women, stabilizing care can include induced abortions — the direct and intentional killing of their preborn children.
On Wednesday, US District Judge B. Lynn Winmill heard arguments in St. Luke’s case as the health care system — the largest in Idaho — asked the judge to block the pro-life law from applying to emergency situations as its case proceeds. The injunction would replace the one that was in place under the original Biden DOJ lawsuit.
Winmill issued a temporary restraining order that will remain in place as he considers the injunction request. The state argued that the pro-life law does not conflict with EMTALA.
St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center made headlines last year after it transferred a woman, Nicole Miller, to a hospital in Utah where she awoke to learn doctors had dismembered her baby. Doctors in Idaho had explained that she may need a preterm delivery due to preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) and heavy bleeding; however, the labor and delivery unit at St. Luke’s “put Ms. Miller on a small plane to Utah,” wrote the New York Times. “Only when she woke up the next morning did she understand, because a nurse had told her, that she was airlifted so she could have an abortion.”
3/6/2025: The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) has signaled that it will drop the lawsuit against Idaho originally filed by the Biden DOJ in 2022. The suit was an attempt to force the state to commit so-called “emergency” abortions in hospitals, under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).
In the original lawsuit, the Biden DOJ claimed that Idaho’s Defense of Life Act violates the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), requiring hospitals receiving federal Medicare funding to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in the emergency room during a medical emergency. The Biden administration argued that “stabilizing care” could include induced abortion, which intentionally kills a preborn child. As Idaho’s law already allows abortion to save the life of the mother (though it is not medically necessary to directly and intentionally kill a preborn child in an emergency situation), it appeared that the Biden DOJ’s move was an attempt to redefine the intentional killing of a preborn human being as “stabilizing treatment.”
Idaho asked the Supreme Court to intercede, and the Court issued a stay on an injunction against the law, allowing the state’s Defense of Life Act to temporarily take effect. Once the Supreme Court decided to send the case back to the Ninth Circuit for review, the injunction against the state was put back in place. However, that injunction was very narrow, and reads: “During the pendency of this lawsuit, the State of Idaho will be enjoined from enforcing Idaho Code § 18- 622 to the extent that statute conflicts with EMTALA-mandated care (emphasis added).”
This meant that any hospital receiving Medicaid funding was forced to allow abortions to be committed under the loose definition of “stabilizing care.” In the meantime, the Ninth Circuit Court still has not issued an opinion on the lawsuit — and now, seemingly, may not have to.
Court filings from St. Luke’s Health System, which has filed its own lawsuit against the state, indicated that the Trump DOJ will officially dismiss the lawsuit this week. The St. Luke’s lawsuit was filed with the expectation that the Trump administration would drop the Biden lawsuit.
Dr. Jim Souza, chief physician executive at St. Luke’s (a pulmonologist, not an obstetrician/gynecologist), has claimed that the hospital system has frequently airlifted patients out of Idaho for patients to receive emergency abortions. One instance, horrifically, resulted in an Idaho woman’s second-trimester child being dismembered by D&E abortion after she was airlifted to Utah; she awoke to a nurse giving her news of her child’s intentional killing.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador believes the claim of frequent airlifts is a “political statement” that is based on “misinformation” being used to promote abortion. “I have talked to doctors in the ER, the same ER rooms that they’re talking about,” he said, “and they are telling me that they have no idea what this administrator is talking about.”
St. Luke’s spokesperson Christine Myron also admitted to the Idaho Capitol Sun that, since that injunction was put in place, not a single patient has had to be flown out of state due to emergencies needing purported “abortion care.” Emergency room patients have “received the full scope of stabilizing care, including termination of the pregnancy if that was medically necessary,” she said, adding, “St. Luke’s physicians have not had to transfer any patients to another state to receive that stabilizing care.”
It should be noted that “termination of pregnancy” is often defined subjectively; while some understand that pregnancies can be “terminated” through early delivery/birth, others claim that regardless of how a pregnancy is “terminated,” it can be classified as an “abortion” — which leads to even greater confusion surrounding the idea of abortions for so-called “medical necessity.”
