The U.S. Supreme Court is reportedly moving to temporarily allow emergency abortions when a woman’s health is at risk in Idaho, according to a copy of what appears to be the ruling that briefly appeared on the court’s website Wednesday.
The decision, unsigned, dismisses the case on procedural grounds, saying the Supreme Court will not address the merits of the dispute at this time, according to the 22-page document, which was published by Bloomberg News. Such a ruling would restore a lower federal court ruling that suspended Idaho’s near-total abortion ban and said the state’s hospitals could perform emergency abortions, if necessary to protect the health of the mother.
The case focuses on whether a federal law requiring emergency care for any patient trumps Idaho’s strict ban on abortion, which allows the procedure only in rare exceptions, including when the life of the pregnant woman is in danger.
It was unclear whether the document was final, and a Supreme Court spokeswoman said only that a decision in the joined cases Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States would eventually be published.
The unsigned decision, described as “per curiam,” meaning “by the Court,” was divided 6 to 3. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a partial agreement and partial dissent. She writes that she would have held that federal law trumped Idaho’s strict ban, adding that she believed the Supreme Court should immediately consider the issue rather than sending it to the lower court.
The liberal justices, as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, all wrote or joined in concurring opinions. Three of the Court’s conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, disagreed.
The document posted online is dated June 26. But the Court announced only two decisions that morning. None concerned abortion.
If the document reflects a final decision, it would be the second time this year that the justices have avoided ruling on the merits of the abortion. The ruling released Wednesday, which said the case was “improperly granted,” suggested the justices would not rule on the merits, but would simply say that access to emergency abortions would be maintained while the case proceeds.
In her concurring opinion, Justice Elena Kagan said the decision “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when termination of a pregnancy is necessary to prevent serious harm to a woman’s health.”
She said the federal law in question, known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, “unambiguously requires” that hospitals receiving federal funds provide any medical treatment necessary to stabilize a patient.
Ketanji Brown Jackson agrees with this assessment. When it agreed to review the case, the Supreme Court also allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to take temporary effect, causing what it described as a totally “catastrophe.” useless which lasted for months. Doctors in the state “were forced to stand back and watch their patients suffer, or arrange for their patients to be flown out of Idaho,” she added.
However, she departed from the majority by stating that a rejection for procedural reasons should not become a means for the Court to postpone certain issues.
“We cannot simply go back in time to the situation that existed before the Court became involved in this matter,” Justice Jackson wrote. There is simply no good reason not to resolve this conflict now. »
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Alito acknowledged that the Court should have ruled on the merits of the case, calling its dismissal a confusing reversal.
“This issue is as ripe for decision as it will ever be,” Mr. Alito wrote. Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy, but emotional and highly politicized issue that this case presents. It’s regrettable. »
For him, he wrote, federal law “does not require hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law.” Rather, he added, it requires hospitals receiving Medicare funding “to treat, not abort, an ‘unborn child’.”
Ms. Barrett seemed to find common ground. Although she wrote that she agreed with the dismissal, the scope of Idaho law had “changed significantly – twice” since the trial began and the parties’ positions had “made the extent of dispute unclear at best.”
Her concurring opinion echoes questions she asked during oral argument, when she focused on under what circumstances state law would allow emergency abortions and under which such procedures would be prohibited .
“If the leaked notice is accurate, it is clear that pregnant women are not out of the woods, far from it,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project. American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
“Make no mistake: The Supreme Court had the opportunity to affirm once and for all that every pregnant person has a fundamental right to emergency abortion care, but it appears it failed to do so.”
An expanded ruling in the Idaho case could have implications for more than a dozen states that have enacted near-total bans since the Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The federal Emergency Care Act was seen as one of the few — and narrow — avenues the Biden administration had to challenge state abortion bans and preserve access, although the legal battle only affects a limited number and type of patients.
Idaho had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after an 11-member panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the law. By agreeing to hear the case, the judges reinstated the ban.
