Defend Medical Providers from a State Law Enforcement Action in Idaho Against the Planned Parenthood Claims on Abortion Services

The state of Idaho is the target of a lawsuit over a legal opinion that said it is not permissible for medical providers to refer patients for abortion services other than in Idaho.

Ral Labrador said a letter from his office was misinterpreted as law enforcement guidance to local prosecutors.

He wrote in the letter to the GOP lawmaker that it was not a guidance document and was not published by the office of the attorney general.

Labrador wrote a letter to Crane in which he said that Idaho has a near-total abortion ban, which prevents an Idaho medical provider from either referring a woman across state lines to access abortions or prescribe abortion pills for her.

Friday’s letter injects fresh uncertainty into whether the lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky and two doctors in Idaho will continue.

US District Judge B. Lynn Winmill on Friday said the withdrawal does suggest “that the urgency behind the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order may have been somewhat or completely abated.”

Brian Church, an attorney for Labrador, told the judge that the attorney general’s new letter makes it as though his March 27 letter “were never written.”

Mr. Church was pretty cautious in what he said and what he did not say. He did not say if your clients continue making referrals you don’t have to worry that they could face enforcement action. He didn’t say that,” said Peter Neiman, one of the attorneys representing Planned Parenthood and the two doctors.

“Perhaps (we) get to a point where the emergency is gone. But right now, I still have a situation where I have doctors who need to tell patients what their options are and are not sure if they can do a complete, accurate and fair job of doing that without facing personal risk,” he said.

The Texas Supreme Court halted the lawsuit and threatened to sue the Food and Drug Administration over adversarial control of contraceptives

Instead, the judge wrote that a ruling in the challengers’ favor would ensure “that women and girls are protected from unnecessary harm and that Defendants do not disregard federal law.”

The plaintiffs will now decide whether they want to continue seeking emergency relief from the court or to let the lawsuit play out on a normal timeline, with their decision on that likely to be made in the coming weeks.

Because the Texas judge has paused his ruling, it has no immediate impact on the availability of medication abortion drugs. The legal fight over the order will intensify in the next few days, as a result of the rival ruling in Washington.

Kacsmaryk paid no heed to the argument made by the FDA that cutting off access to contraceptives would endanger pregnant women and abortion workers and would force women to have abortions through surgical procedures.

Ultimately, he said he would not grant the Democratic states’ request that he remove some of the drug restrictions at this preliminary stage in the proceedings, because that would go well beyond maintaining the status quo while the case advances. He noted that, if he had granted that request, the new FDA rule that allows pharmacy to prescribe abortion pills would be undone. That would reduce its availability and run directly counter to the request.

Besides pausing his ruling for one week, Kacsmaryk – an appointee of former President Donald Trump who sits in Amarillo, Texas – seemed to hold nothing back as he ripped apart the FDA’s approval of mifepristone and embraced wholeheartedly the challengers’ arguments the drug’s risks weren’t adequately considered.

Kacsmaryk, whose anti-abortion advocacy before joining the federal bench was documented by a recent Washington Post profile, showed a striking hostility to medication abortion, which is the method used in a majority of the abortions in the United States.

He said the FDA’s refusal to impose certain restrictions on the drug’s use “resulted in many deaths and many more severe or life-threatening adverse reactions.”

“Whatever the numbers are, they likely would be considerably lower had FDA not acquiesced to the pressure to increase access to chemical abortion at the expense of women’s safety,” he said.

The president of the American Medical Association said that the court’s disregard of scientific facts will cause harm to our patients and undermine the health of the nation.

He explained the rationale behind the preliminary injunction being handed down before the case could proceed to a trial, and he said that embryo rights could be considered in the analysis. The Supreme Court stated in its June ruling that the assertion went far beyond what it had said.

The analysis of individual justice and “irreparable injury” that Kacsmaryk referred to applies to the unborn humans who have died because of Mifepristone.

They had asked Rice to remove certain restrictions – known as REMS or Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy – the FDA has imposed on mifepristone, with the blue states arguing the drug was safe and effective enough to make those restrictions unnecessary.

While Rice is rejecting that bid for now, he granted a request the states also made that the FDA be ordered to keep the drugs on the market. But Rice’s ruling only applies in the 17 plaintiff states and the District of Columbia.

The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is the most conservative appeals court in the country. Yet some legal scholars were skeptical that the 5th Circuit, as conservative as it is, would let Kacmsaryk’s order take effect.

The blue states’ lawsuit was brought to Washington, which is under the 9th Circuit. It is unclear if the ruling from Rice will be appealed. The Justice Department is still looking at the decision in Washington. The Supreme Court would intervene if there was a so-called circuit split. The Supreme Court has no choice but to get involved because of the practical impact of the two district court rulings.

The lawyer for the challengers in the Texas case, anti-abortion medication associations and doctors, said Friday evening that he had not reviewed the Washington decision, so he could not weigh in on how it impacted Kacsmaryk’s order that the drug’s approval be halted.

“I’m not sure whether there’s a direct conflict yet and with the Washington state decision just because I haven’t read it yet, but there may not be a direct conflict,” Erik Baptist, who is an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, said. It is unlikely that it is needed at this point to make a conclusion about whether or not there is a conflict or not, though it may be inevitably going to the Supreme Court.