Texas has filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its contention that federal law trumps state law when delivering abortions that save lives.

The lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the most recent salvo in the legal melee that has erupted since the Supreme Court ruled last month that individual U.S. states may ban or restrict abortion.

In response to the Supreme Court's ruling, the Department of Health and Human Procedures (HHS) stated that federal law protects health care professionals who offer "life-or health-saving abortion services in emergency situations."

In a letter to health care providers, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra stated, "When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life and health of the pregnant person... that state law is preempted,"

Biden will be compelled to comply with the judgment

Paxton filed a lawsuit against HHS for implementing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), alleging that it would "require hospitals to perform abortions."

Paxton stated that the Biden administration intends to convert every emergency hospital in the country into walk-in abortion clinics.

"EMTALA does not authorise and has never been thought to authorise the federal government to require emergency health care providers to perform abortions," he added.

Paxton said, "Now they are trying to have their appointed bureaucrats mandate that hospitals and emergency medicine physicians perform abortions,"

"I will ensure that President Biden will be forced to comply with the Supreme Court's important decision concerning abortion and I will not allow him to undermine and distort existing laws to fit his administration's unlawful agenda."

Civil dispute

The press secretary of the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, condemned Paxton as "yet another extreme and radical Republican elected official."

Jean-Pierre stated, "It is unthinkable that this public official would sue to block women from receiving life-saving care in emergency rooms, a right protected under U.S. law,"

After the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling establishing a woman's legal right to an abortion, Texas enacted a near-total ban on abortion.

In circumstances where a pregnant woman faces an imminent threat to her life, the state legislation does permit abortion.

Approximately two dozen states in the United States are projected to severely restrict or outright ban and criminalize abortions, forcing women to travel great distances to states that currently allow the practice.