One of the great ironies of the Trump administration is its obsessive language about “protecting women”—entirely as a front for anti-trans bigotry, of course. In reality, the administration’s policies and positions pose a direct threat to women and pregnant people’s lives and physical safety.
On Wednesday, Trump’s Justice Department officially dismissed a Biden-era lawsuit seeking to require Idaho’s total abortion ban to comply with federal law and allow pregnant patients to receive emergency abortion care. This comes after, on Tuesday, the Idaho hospital system St. Luke’s said in a court filing that the DOJ informed them it imminently intended to drop the case. The law in question is EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals that receive federal funding to provide emergency, stabilizing care to all patients—including pregnant people experiencing complications. However, Idaho’s abortion ban allows emergency abortions only when someone is imminently about to die, not just to help someone reach a stable condition. Idaho’s law entirely disregards how taking a “wait-and-see approach” can lead to fatal outcomes.
“By withdrawing this case, Donald Trump and his DOJ have decided to let women die,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL), said in a statement. “Rather than protect our lives and freedoms, they are following the playbook of anti-abortion extremists.” The Trump administration hasn’t publicly commented on the DOJ’s sharp reversal.
The same court filing from St. Luke’s, Idaho’s largest hospital system, requested a temporary restraining order to allow hospitals to continue providing stabilizing emergency abortions. Idaho U.S District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill granted the TRO, barring the state of Idaho from criminalizing doctors who provide emergency abortion care for the time being. But the future remains uncertain, especially with a major hearing on Idaho’s abortion ban in the same district court slated for Wednesday—and with Trump’s DOJ having made clear they believe hospitals should let pregnant people die.
In 2022, the Biden administration sued Idaho, arguing the state’s ban is at odds with EMTALA. Then, in June, the Supreme Court ruled in Moyle v. United States that doctors in Idaho can provide some pregnant people with emergency abortion care without fear of prosecution for now, but ultimately punted the case back to a lower court. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments for the case in December, with attorneys for Idaho arguing that even if a patient was about to lose a limb to septic shock, they should still be denied emergency abortion care. The court hasn’t yet issued a ruling.
Whatever the Ninth Circuit rules, the Trump administration clearly has no intention of holding accountable hospitals that violate EMTALA in any way. As a result of the DOJ dropping this case, St. Luke’s says it expects to airlift even more women in need of emergency abortion care out of the state. The hospital system says this happened six times in the span of just three months in 2024, before the Moyle ruling allowed their hospitals to perform some abortions. Abortion bans and hesitation from doctors on when to provide emergency abortion care is life-threatening for pregnant people: Over the last several months, ProPublica has reported on the cases of five different women who died from being denied timely emergency abortions under state bans.
“For 40 years, across presidential administrations, the federal government has protected the right of all people to emergency care, including abortions,” Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer of the ACLU, said in a statement. “Today, President Trump has abandoned pregnant patients, and his campaign promises to voters,” she added, pointing to Trump’s bullshit campaign promise “not to interfere with women’s ability to access abortion and patients’ ability to get the care they need.” Nancy Northrup, president of the Center of Reproductive Rights, similarly called the DOJ’s decision “a dramatic change in government policy.”
Within the first week of his term, Trump signed an executive order that strongly signaled his administration would not enforce EMTALA. In January, Alison Tanner, an attorney at the National Women’s Law Center who represents a woman with a pending EMTALA lawsuit, told Jezebel that whatever action Trump takes, EMTALA still stands: “It has no impact on any women’s lawsuits,” Tanner said. “No administrative actions they ever take will change the rights that individuals have under the language of EMTALA, nor the duties that hospitals have under EMTALA.”
NWLC represents and supports patients who are denied emergency abortions under EMTALA. The reproductive justice legal organization If/When/How also offers resources, including a legal helpline, to patients who are placed in these situations.
Even before this move from the DOJ, pregnant people in Idaho faced a public health crisis. By June 2024, more than one in five OBGYNs had left Idaho since the state’s abortion ban took effect in 2022. The state is rife with maternity care deserts. The Moyle ruling in June was barely a bandaid.
“Make no mistake,” Schifeling said, “women may die because of these actions, and President Trump will be directly responsible.”
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