August 2, 2022

DOJ Sues Idaho Over Near-Total Abortion Ban

Idaho’s law would prevent doctors from performing medically necessary abortions, DOJ says.

Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Supreme Court may have upended the right to choose, but the Justice Department is still trying to ensure that women who need abortions in life-threatening emergencies will be able to get them.

Today, Attorney General Merrick Garland—who would be on the Supreme Court if it weren’t for Mitch McConnell’s machinations—announced that the DOJ was suing Idaho over a near-total abortion ban set to take effect this month. The state law, Garland said, violates a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, that requires hospitals that receive Medicare funds to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment to patients who arrive at their emergency departments while experiencing a medical emergency.”

As my colleague Madison Pauly wrote last month, the federal government has been invoking EMTALA “in response to states enacting criminal abortion bans that allow exceptions to save a pregnant person’s life—but fail to clarify just how close to death a pregnant patient must be before a doctor is allowed to give them a medically necessary abortion.” According to DOJ’s lawsuit, “The Idaho law would make it a criminal offense for doctors to comply with EMTALA’s requirement to provide stabilizing treatment, even where a doctor determines that abortion is the medical treatment necessary to prevent a patient from suffering severe health risks or even death.”

The DOJ suit is the Biden administration’s first litigation aimed at counteracting a state’s abortion restrictions. Meanwhile, voters in Kansas today will decide whether to remove an amendment to the state constitution that protects abortion access, providing one of the first major pieces of insight into popular sentiment around abortion post-Roe.

This article first appeared in the Mother Jones Daily, our newsletter that cuts through the noise to help you make sense of the most important stories of the day. Sign up for free here!

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate