The Attorney General said that Idaho’s restrictive abortion law violated a federal act, requiring emergency medical treatment.
Attorney General Merrick Garland continued the fight for abortion rights in a new lawsuit that the Justice Department is filing against the State of Idaho to overrule a law preventing women seeking emergency treatment from being able to get an abortion. The AG announced the lawsuit, stating that the new law goes against the Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act (EMTALA), in a press conference on Tuesday, August 2. Garland said that the DOJ was seeking a “declaratory judgment” that the Gem State’s law violates the Constitution, as well as an injunction, blocking the restrictive abortion law from being enforced.
During the announcement, Garland explained the grounds that the lawsuit would block the Idaho law, which criminalizes anyone who performs an abortion, per The Associated Press. “The suit seeks to hold invalid the state’s criminal prohibition on providing abortion as applied to women who are suffering medical emergencies,” Garland said in the briefing. “Every hospital that receives Medicare funds must provide necessary stabilizing treatment to a patient who arrives at an emergency room, suffering from a medical condition that could put their life or health in serious jeopardy.
