BOISE, Idaho — Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador cast doubts on doctors’ claims that they’re transferring an increasing number of patients out of state for care to comply with the state’s strict abortion laws.

The claims were central to a U.S. Supreme Court hearing Wednesday that will determine whether Idaho abortion law conflicts with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. In amicus briefs filed for the case, and in interviews with the Idaho Statesman and other news outlets, doctors and the state’s largest health care provider, St. Luke’s, described emergency situations that prompted the transfer of patients out of state to seek abortions.

St. Luke’s chief physician executive Dr. Jim Souza last week told the Statesman the hospital system has transported six patients out of state for obstetric emergencies since January, when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Idaho’s law to fully take effect. In 2023, St. Luke’s transferred a single patient out of state for an emergency abortion, Souza said.

Labrador at a news conference after the Supreme Court hearing implied that those transfers either didn’t happen or were unnecessary. He said the statements about out-of-state transfers, which were referenced during the hearing, were not made under oath.

Labrador also said doctors are not “conforming with their practice” if they transfer patients whose lives are in danger to hospitals out of state.

“It’s really hard for me to conceive of a single instance where a woman has to be airlifted out of Idaho to perform an abortion,” Labrador said. “In fact, I have talked to doctors in the same ER rooms that (hospitals are) talking about, and they are telling me that they have no idea what this administrator is talking about.”

Labrador and Idaho Chief of Constitutional Litigation and Policy Joshua Turner, who argued in court on the state’s behalf, maintained that Idaho law doesn’t clash with the federal law, which applies to any hospital that accepts Medicare funding. The Idaho attorneys said that in “every single” hypothetical medical situation presented by the U.S. Department of Justice in the case, Idaho law would allow abortion.

“We have been clear on what the law means, and the Idaho Supreme Court was clear about what the law means,” Labrador said.

The federal government and Idaho doctors have told a different story.

In the amicus briefs and interviews, physicians and St. Luke’s Health System said there’s fear and confusion around Idaho law. Doctors face criminal prosecution if they perform an abortion in violation of the law’s exceptions — when “necessary to prevent the death” of a pregnant woman, in cases of ectopic or molar pregnancy and in reported instances of rape or incest.

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