HHS Emergency Abortion Guidance Likely to Fall in Texas Lawsuit

Three appeals court judges Tuesday appeared open to Texas’ claim that agency guidance interpreting a federal emergency law should be halted because it’s merely part of the Biden administration’s attempt to legalize abortion nationwide.

Judges Leslie H. Southwick, Kurt D. Engelhardt, and Cory T. Wilson, of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, seemed skeptical of the Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Bercerra’s argument that the guidance didn’t do anything “new,” suggesting instead that the agency possibly converted the emergency care law into a federal abortion mandate.

“It’s a very extraordinary thing,” one judge said of the ...