A federal judge in Texas blocked President Joe Biden‘s administration from enforcing its new health guidance in the GOP-dominated state that required medical facilities to provide emergency abortions to women regardless of state bans on the procedures.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, a Lubbock-based court, late Tuesday sided with Attorney General Ken Paxton that the Department of Health and Human Services‘ guidance was unauthorized and extended beyond the text of a tangential federal law.
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, an appointee of President Donald Trump who delivered the ruling, declined to enjoin the HHS guidance nationwide and instead only blocked the agency from enforcing it and its interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in Texas and against two anti-abortion coalitions of doctors.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S EMERGENCY ABORTION GUIDELINES EXPLAINED
“That guidance goes well beyond EMTALA’s text, which protects both mothers and unborn children, is silent as to abortion, and preempts state law only when the two directly conflict,” Hendrix wrote.
Hendrix’s decision comes nearly a month after Biden signed an executive order seeking to ease access to terminate pregnancies after the Supreme Court overturned a half-century of abortion precedent under Roe v. Wade, allowing states to make laws severely limiting or restricting such procedures in the 6-3 ruling for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Last month, HHS declared that the EMTALA stipulates that physicians must perform an abortion in an emergency regardless of state law. The announcement was in response to abortion services ceasing in the Lone Star State on July 2 due to a nearly century-old abortion ban that took effect.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the Tuesday decision a “blow to Texans,” saying that “it’s wrong, it’s backwards, and women may die as a result,” according to a statement.
Jean-Pierre called on people to urge Congress to act, saying legislative maneuvers are the “only way right now to secure a woman’s right to choose,” but she vowed Biden would continue to “defend the rights of women who need access to emergency reproductive care.”
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The decision in Texas came just hours before an expected ruling by another judge on whether a near-total ban in Idaho challenged by the Justice Department conflicts with the same federal statute at issue in the Texas case.
The Washington Examiner contacted HHS and Paxton’s office.
