This week, the Trump administration moved to dismiss a lawsuit against the state of Idaho

that sought to allow abortions in the case of medical emergencies.

Idaho is one of 12 states across the country with a near total abortion ban.

The Biden administration originally sued Idaho, arguing that federal law requires doctors

to perform an abortion if a patient's

life is at risk. Joining me now to discuss the impact is Mary Ziegler, a professor at UC Davis

School of Law and legal historian on reproductive rights. Mary, welcome back to the NewsHour.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So we should note the Supreme Court did weigh in on this

case last year. It's that ruling that allowed emergency abortions to continue in Idaho, but they

kicked the key legal question back to this appeals court. So, Mary, what does the Trump

administrations move to dismiss the case mean for its future? Well, at the moment, the case seems to be dead on arrival.

There's an interesting question about whether some other party will try to intervene to keep

the case alive.

In other words, whether there'll be some other party withstanding that can step in where

the Trump administration has backed away.

But we don't know yet if that's going to happen. So emergency room doctors had been performing what they deemed to be life-saving

abortions while this was in litigation. Without the case, where does that leave doctors on the

ground and patients in need of this care? It leaves them in a tremendous amount of

uncertainty. Idaho is maintained throughout this litigation that its abortion ban permits what it

views as medically necessary abortions. Physicians have been unclear as to whether that's true

and I think also unwilling to risk the kind of penalties that Idaho law authorizes

for making the wrong guess. And we've seen since the Supreme Court overturned Roby Wade in

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