WASHINGTON (AP) supreme court It seems they are ready to allow a state of emergency. abortion According to a copy of the ruling, briefly posted on the court’s website on Wednesday and obtained by Bloomberg News, if a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk in Idaho, …
of document The ruling suggests the court will decide it should not have been so quick to get involved in a case challenging Idaho’s strict abortion ban. The 6-3 vote will reinstate a lower court order that allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect the health of pregnant patients.
Such an outcome would leave the core issue in the case unresolved and important questions remain unanswered, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a concurring opinion.
“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant Idaho patients, it’s a delay,” she wrote.
The Supreme Court acknowledged on Wednesday that its publications division had mistakenly posted the documents. A decision in the Idaho case will be released “in due course,” Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch are said to have dissented from the decision.
The judges’ decision has not yet been formally announced, so it may not be final. It means the case will continue at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and return to the judges for review.
Greer Donley, a reproductive law scholar and professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said the Supreme Court may be reluctant to rule on abortion-related issues in an election year on substantive rather than procedural grounds.
Seven in 10 American adults support protecting the right to access an abortion when someone has a miscarriage or other pregnancy-related emergency, according to a new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Policy Research.
The ruling overturns an earlier Supreme Court order that had allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to remain in place temporarily even in cases of medical emergency. Since then, several women have required air ambulance evacuation. Outside the state Doctors in Idaho say abortions will only be allowed if they are a routine medical treatment to avoid infection, bleeding or other serious health risks.
The nation’s top health official, Xavier Becerra, met as scheduled with Idaho doctors and patients on Wednesday in Boise to discuss the state’s strict abortion ban. Idaho obstetrician-gynecologist Sarah Thompson said if a woman’s amniotic fluid ruptures early in pregnancy and there’s no chance the fetus will survive, she can’t be treated with early delivery.
“While there is nothing we can do to save the baby, there are things we can do to protect her health and future fertility,” Thompson said.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists hopes the Supreme Court will “listen to the scientific evidence and medical experts and ultimately ensure that emergency abortion care is available to people in all states,” said general counsel Molly Megan.
The case began when the Biden administration sued Idaho, arguing that the state’s abortion ban violates federal health care law because it doesn’t allow doctors to perform abortions to stabilize pregnant women in rare emergency situations where their health is at serious risk.
Idaho argues that its ban allows pregnant patients to have life-saving abortions and that federal law does not require it to make broader exceptions. The state’s attorney general’s office declined to comment Wednesday.
Katie Daniel, state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Idaho courts have ruled that a woman’s life doesn’t have to be in imminent danger for action to be taken.
Most Republican-controlled states have begun tightening restrictions following the Supreme Court ruling. Roe v. Wade was overturned Enacted two years ago, Idaho became one of 14 states that bans abortion at any stage of pregnancy, with very limited exceptions.
The case will likely return to the Supreme Court, said Rachel LeBouche, dean of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law and a reproductive law scholar. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Ruling in a similar case Federal law does not supersede Texas’ anti-abortion laws.
So while the Supreme Court’s decision means that, at least for now, abortion will be allowed in Idaho in medical emergencies, LeBouche said, “there are about 38 million people in the 5th Circuit. There are a lot of people whose lives will not be changed in any way by this decision.”
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of America, said the decision, without clear assurances that patients would be able to access abortions in medical emergencies, would be “devastating.”
Pregnant women Being rejected by emergency departments in the United States According to federal documents obtained by The Associated Press, the number of people seeking abortions has skyrocketed since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion.
Sarah Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University and an expert on federal EMTALA law, said if the Supreme Court rules in Idaho’s favor, it would create “a world where women have to lose their reproductive organs.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit was filed under a federal law that requires hospitals that accept Medicare to provide stabilizing treatment regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. The law is called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA.
Because nearly all hospitals accept Medicare, emergency doctors in Idaho and other states that ban abortions must perform abortions if necessary to stabilize a pregnant patient’s condition and avoid serious health risks, such as loss of reproductive organs, the Justice Department argued.
Idaho argued that the patient life exception covers serious health conditions and that the Biden administration misread the law to get around state bans and expand abortion access.
Carol Tobias, chair of the National Right to Life Committee, said the committee was pleased the Justice Department said its arguments would only apply in rare cases.
Doctors say Idaho’s law, which makes them uneasy about performing abortions even when the pregnancy poses a serious risk to a patient’s health, provides that anyone convicted of performing an abortion faces a minimum of two years in prison.
A federal judge initially sided with the Democratic administration and ruled that abortion in medical emergencies was legal, but after states appealed, the Supreme Court allowed the law to go into full effect in January.
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Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz and Lynley Sanders in Washington, Jeff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Harry Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.
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See Associated Press coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court below. https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
