AG Labrador Files Closing Brief in Federal Lawsuit Defending Idaho’s Pro-Life Law

BOISE, ID - Attorney General Raúl Labrador's office filed its closing briefs in Seyb v. Members of the Idaho Board of Medicine, capping a trial in which a St. Luke's physician asked a federal court to strike down Idaho's Defense of Life Act. The full closing brief is available to the press here.

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court settled this issue for good. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Court held the Constitution says nothing about abortion and left the decision on how to regulate abortion to the states. Relying on that authority, Idaho enacted laws to defend unborn children while still allowing mothers to make difficult decisions when their own lives are at risk.

Dr. Stacy Seyb is now asking a federal judge to defy that ruling and hand doctors the power to decide when an unborn child's life ends, based on nothing more than their own shifting, undefined standards. Seyb also asked the Court to allow abortions when a doctor diagnoses an unborn child with a significant disability. He told the court he sees no point in continuing a pregnancy under such circumstances, questioning at trial, "What is the point?" Attorney General Labrador's filing calls this exactly what it is: an attempt to use the courts to grant legal cover for eugenics, a position that has no place in Idaho.

Seyb's testimony at trial shows that he failed to learn what Idaho's laws actually required, and that he operated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the requirements of the law. That failure to understand Idaho's law is actively harming women. Idaho law already allows doctors acting in their good faith medical judgment to save a mother's life, without requiring a physician to wait until her death is imminent before performing a life-saving abortion. The Idaho Supreme Court settled that standard more than three years before this trial began. But Seyb testified that he never read that ruling and remains confused about Idaho's laws. That misunderstanding led Seyb to fly a patient to Utah for care he could-and should-have given her in Idaho, resulting in the patient being septic when she arrived in Utah. Unrebutted expert testimony at trial confirmed that Seyb's decision to fly that patient to Utah, instead of legally performing the life-saving abortion in Idaho, increased her risk of complications and death.

"For years, pro-abortion advocates, the medical establishment, and the mainstream media have pointed to Dr. Seyb's claims to allege that Idaho's pro-life laws forced women out of state and put their lives at risk. The sworn testimony in this case tells a very different story. Dr. Seyb refused to understand the law and created the danger for his patients," said Attorney General Labrador. "Idaho law allows physicians to make good faith medical judgments to perform abortions when necessary to save the life of the mother. It does not require death to be imminent as suggested by Dr. Seyb. We will continue to defend this truth against misinformation and deception."

The brief also notes that Idaho's law has coincided with a dramatic drop in maternal deaths since Dobbs. Idaho's pregnancy-related mortality rate has plummeted from 18.7 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018 to 4.29 in 2024, and Idaho's combined rate over the past two years runs well below the national average.

Finally, the brief explains in depth that there is no historical support in the history and traditions of the United States to support Seyb's arguments that Idaho's laws are unconstitutional. Rather, the clear history in the U.S. prior to the now overturned Roe v. Wade decision is that states were always free to regulate abortion. Idaho's laws protecting unborn life, while allowing for an abortion when necessary to save the life of the mother, are consistent with centuries of U.S. legal history and tradition.