Texas Sues Biden Administration Over Access to Emergency Medical Abortions

HOUSTON — Days after President Biden moved to ensure some abortion access in states with bans in place, Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas on Thursday filed suit challenging the federal guidance that he said would “force abortions” in hospitals in the state.

The suit represented an opening salvo in what is likely to be a protracted legal tug of war between the Biden administration and states like Texas that have swiftly taken steps to ban abortion in almost all cases in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

On Monday, the Biden administration instructed hospitals that, even in states where abortion is illegal, federal law required doctors to perform an abortion for a pregnant woman who showed up in the emergency department if they believed it was “the stabilizing treatment necessary” to resolve an emergency medical condition.

Mr. Paxton, in the suit, said the president was trying to “attempt to use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”