The Trump administration intends to drop a lawsuit filed by the previous administration that sought to permit Idaho healthcare practitioners to perform emergency abortions, a new court filing shows.
The court filing, which includes a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney’s email explaining the department’s intentions, came on March 4. On March 5 at 3 p.m., a federal district judge in Boise is scheduled to hear a motion from a healthcare system in a related case for a preliminary injunction allowing its physicians to perform emergency abortions in the state.
Idaho’s Defense of Life Act forbids abortions except when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman” or during the first trimester when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. Performing an abortion can lead to five years in prison and result in the revocation of a medical doctor’s license….