Attorney General Raúl Labrador has filed a motion for summary judgment asking a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s Defense of Life Act.
According to a news release from the Attorney General’s Office, the motion reveals that Dr. Stacy Seyb, the physician bringing the challenge, never understood Idaho’s law nor read the January 2023 Idaho Supreme Court decision clarifying the state’s abortion laws when he transferred pregnant women out of state.
Dr. Seyb, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at St. Luke’s Health System, sued Idaho claiming the state’s abortion restrictions are unconstitutional. But his own deposition testimony undermines his claim because he referred patients out of state without learning what Idaho’s laws allow. He admitted he didn’t understand Idaho’s law, which permits physicians to perform abortions when the doctor, in good faith medical judgment, believes an abortion is necessary to prevent the woman’s death—without requiring certainty or imminence.
Dr. Seyb testified he never read the Idaho Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Planned Parenthood vs State that clarified doctors may use “good faith medical judgment” without “objective certainty” or requiring death to be “imminent.”
The case is Seyb vs Members of the Idaho Board of Medicine, pending before Judge B. Lynn Winmill in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
