Idaho fights to preserve near-total abortion ban

Idaho asked the Ninth Circuit to pause a lower court injunction that had blocked enforcement of the state's near-total abortion ban in cases where a pregnant woman's health, not just her life, is at risk. The state's law allows abortion only to prevent death, and its attorney argued the injunction improperly leaves the decision to doctors' 'subjective judgment.'

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill, who issued the original injunction, had called Idaho's lack of a health exception an outlier that 'contravenes basic principles of our constitutional order,' citing a case in which a patient with end-stage renal disease needed an abortion to remain eligible for a kidney transplant. Appellate judges pressed Idaho's attorney on whether the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision actually addressed medical exceptions at all, noting its silence on the question.

The panel, which included judges appointed by both Clinton and George W. Bush, did not indicate when it would rule, leaving the injunction's narrower, doctor-specific version in place for now.

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