When opponents of Idaho’s strict abortion law said it was forcing women to be emergency-airlifted out of state to have their pregnancies terminated, it shocked the Supreme Court.
Now Idaho says the claim is not true.
The state, in a brief filed in a federal appeals court, said St. Luke’s, the state’s largest hospital and the one that made the claim, has not been able to back it up. In a deposition, the hospital’s representative said she couldn’t say why the women were airlifted.
At least one of the cases ended with the birth of twins in “very much a wanted pregnancy,” not the emergency abortion St. Luke’s had suggested, Alan Hurst, Idaho’s lawyer, told the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Hurst said the hospital tried to “prevent public disclosure” of the revelations but recently dropped its objections.
“Thus, while St. Luke’s has continued to claim publicly that all six of these women were transferred exclusively for abortions, it testified under oath that it does not know why women chose to be transferred,” Mr. Hurst said in the brief filed last week.
The case at issue involves the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which governs how health facilities that accept federal funding must carry out emergency medical treatment.
After the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v. Wade decision and left abortion policy in the hands of states, the Biden administration attempted to use EMTALA to insist that hospitals perform abortions on women if it was necessary to stabilize their health situation.
Idaho objected, saying that overstated the law under EMTALA and trampled on the state’s policy.
The case rushed to the Supreme Court, which ruled Idaho’s abortion law could remain in effect while the justices considered the case.
During oral arguments, the Biden administration pointed justices to the airlift claims as proof the state law was allowing women’s medical conditions to deteriorate to the point they had to be flown out to get abortions.
In June, the justices ruled they had been too hasty in taking the case and sent it back to the 9th Circuit to develop the facts.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed and scolded colleagues for taking the case in the first place. She cited the airlift abortion claims as evidence the justices mishandled the case.
“As a practical matter, this court’s intervention meant that Idaho physicians were forced to step back and watch as their patients suffered, or arrange for their patients to be airlifted out of Idaho,” she wrote.
Justice Elena Kagan also cited the airlift in her opinion.
“Those transfers measure the difference between the life-threatening conditions Idaho will allow hospitals to treat and the health-threatening conditions it will not, despite EMTALA’s command,” she wrote.
Idaho’s backers said the new revelations puncture those justices’ arguments.
“At the U.S. Supreme Court and in the 9th Circuit, the administration has repeated St. Luke’s hospital’s unsubstantiated claim that Idaho’s law required women to be emergency airlifted from our state to obtain an abortion. But when questioned under oath, St. Luke’s admitted it did not know why the women were transferred,” said Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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