Emergency abortions are now allowed -- at only some Idaho hospitals, judge rules

Nicole Blanchard, Idaho Statesman on Mar 21, 2025

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BOISE, Idaho — Idaho doctors can perform an abortion as stabilizing care during a medical emergency, a federal judge ruled this week — so long as they’re at the right hospital.

U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled Thursday that only St. Luke’s Health System and its medical providers are protected from Idaho’s near-total abortion ban where it intersects with emergency care. The ruling created a preliminary injunction in the case between the health system, which is Idaho’s largest, and Attorney General Raúl Labrador.

Spokespersons for St. Luke’s and the Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

St. Luke’s sued Labrador in January over abortion restrictions it said are incompatible with its obligation to provide patients with stabilizing care under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. Idaho law only allows abortion in some instances: ectopic or molar pregnancies, reported cases of rape or incest, and procedures that prevent the death of a pregnant patient.

Since abortion restrictions took effect in Idaho in 2022, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, doctors have said the state’s laws make it unclear whether they can perform an abortion if a patient’s health, not life, is at risk.

At the time St. Luke’s sued the state, the hospital system said it wanted to preserve an injunction already in place allowing all Idaho hospitals to perform abortions in medical emergencies. That injunction — which Winmill issued in 2022— stemmed from a Department of Justice lawsuit against Idaho also over EMTALA. Republican President Donald Trump’s administration dropped the lawsuit, which was filed under former Democratic President Joe Biden, earlier this month.

A temporary injunction was in place in the St. Luke’s case since then.

The decision Thursday marks the narrowest emergency abortion protection since June 2024. For about six months last year — between when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the DOJ case and when it remanded it back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — Idaho’s ban was fully in effect. St. Luke’s said it airlifted six patients out of the state for emergency abortion access during that time.

Winmill said in his Thursday decision that “St. Luke’s does not exist in a vacuum,” and the health system said it may not be able to handle the strain of taking patient transfers from other hospitals not protected by the injunction. Still, the judge sided with an argument from Labrador that the scope of the injunction was too broad when the health care system is the only party in the lawsuit.

The judge denied a motion from the attorney general to dismiss the case.

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