The Supreme Court is set to consider a second abortion case this term, this time dealing with claims by a Republican-led state that the Biden administration is attempting to wield a 40-year-old federal law as an “abortion mandate.”
On the heels of a debate over the Federal Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of an abortion pill, the high court will consider later this month whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) pre-empts the state of Idaho’s newly enacted Defense of Life Act – which makes it a crime for any medical provider to perform an abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.
The Justice Department argued that the state’s law does not go far enough to allow abortions in more medical emergency circumstances.
However, proponents of the state law say that the administration’s lawsuit against Idaho is attempting to use a federal statute as an “abortion mandate” to benefit the president ahead of the 2024 elections.
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A crowd outside the Supreme Court reacting to the Dobbs ruling in 2022. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)
“Construing EMTALA as a federal abortion mandate raises grave questions under the major questions doctrine that affect both Congress and this Court,” Idaho argued in legal filings.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said, “The Supreme Court made it clear that it’s up to the states to decide what our laws should be and that it’s not for the federal government.”
“But Joe Biden and his administration decided to come straight and sue us in federal courts. We are excited to go before the Supreme Court to show that the state should be deciding these issues and not the federal government,” he said.
The DOJ said in its response to the high court that while Idaho’s law makes it a felony for a doctor to terminate a pregnancy unless doing so is “necessary” to prevent the patient’s “death,” that exception is “narrower” than EMTALA, which by its terms “protects patients not only from imminent death but also from emergencies that seriously threaten their health.”
However, Idaho accused the administration of “construing the spare phrase” in the federal law “as a blank slate to be filled with the Executive Branch’s preferred abortion policy collides with multiple statutory provisions guaranteeing emergency medical care for a pregnant woman and her unborn…
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