BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho Legislature is asking a federal judge to reconsider his ruling on the near-total abortion ban because they believe his ruling also conflicts with the language in the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
In a brief filed Wednesday, Daniel W. Bower and Monte Neil Stewart submitted a request for U.S District Judge B. Lynn Winmill to amend or rescind his ruling from Aug. 24, which partially blocked Idaho's abortion ban when conflicting with EMTALA. Without the ruling, doctors would have been held criminally responsible for providing abortions in medical emergencies.
"Modifying the preliminary injunction in this way is literally a life-and-death matter. Some of Idaho’s preborn children may well die as a consequence of the Idaho Order as now written— children whose lives Idaho’s 622 Statute protects properly and constitutionally," the brief said.
The Legislature argues that EMTALA expresses concern in medical emergencies for a fetus, so they say that the Biden Administration deliberately ignored this portion of the act to serve their own interests as an "erasure scheme."
The brief calls the Department of Justice's actions a "political maneuver" to "repurpose EMTALA" as a Roe/Casey restoration act.
The brief cites a Texas ruling on the state's abortion ban -- a judge ruled that Texas' ban does not conflict with EMTALA.
"Because EMTALA simply 'does not resolve how stabilizing treatments must be provided when a doctor’s duties to a pregnant woman and her unborn child possibly conflict,' id. at 49, “EMTALA leaves [that resolution] to the states," the brief said.
However, it is unclear what resolution the state would choose when the life of a pregnant person and their fetus conflict.
"The people of Idaho enjoy constitutional authority to govern themselves with respect to abortion, and no federal statute, however overread by an Administration committed to countering Dobbs, can lawfully diminish that authority," it said.
RELATED: House GOP pledges to fight Judge Winmill's injunction decision, says 'some preborn children may die'
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