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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration on Thursday after the Department of Health and Human Services reiterated guidelines this week that require doctors to perform an abortion if a pregnant woman’s life is in danger.
“President Biden blatantly disregarded the legislative and democratic process — and ignored a Supreme Court decision before the ink was dry — by forcing his bureaucrat-appointed officials to mandate that hospitals and emergency physicians perform abortions,” the lawsuit, which names Health Secretary Xavier Becerra and other officials as defendants, says.
Becerra issued the guidance to health care providers on Monday, writing in a letter that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, doctors “must” provide an abortion if it is the “stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve” a medical emergency .
“When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life and health of the pregnant woman — or makes the exception narrower than EMTALA’s definition of a medical emergency — that state law prevails,” Becerra wrote in the letter.
Abortion rights protesters gather near the state Capitol in Austin, Texas, June 25, 2022. (SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images)
Paxton said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the administration’s interpretation was too broad and required “abortions in a whole new set of circumstances.”
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“Furthermore, the Abortion Mandate conflicts with the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal dollars to fund abortions except when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or the woman’s life is in danger,” the lawsuit states.
The case comes about three weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to impose strict abortion restrictions for the first time in five decades.
Anti-abortion rights protesters take part in nationwide demonstrations following a leaked Supreme Court opinion suggesting the possibility of overturning the abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade, in Houston, Texas, U.S., May 14, 2022. (REUTERS/Callaghan O’ Hare)
In the coming weeks, a trigger law banning all abortions will go into effect in Texas unless the pregnancy “places the woman at risk of death or poses a serious risk of significant impairment of an essential bodily function.”
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Texas already passed a law last year that bans nearly all abortions after six weeks.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit Thursday.
Paul Best is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Paul.best@fox.com and on Twitter: @KincaidBest.
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