Aug 24 (Reuters) – A federal judge in Texas late on Tuesday blocked President Joe Biden’s administration from enforcing new guidance in the Republican-led state requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions to women regardless of state bans on the procedure.
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix (Trump) in Lubbock agreed with Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) guidance was unauthorized and went beyond the text of a related federal law.
The judge declined to bar the guidance from being enforced nationwide and instead only blocked the HHS from enforcing it in Texas and against two anti-abortion groups of doctors.
