The US Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block access to emergency abortion services in Idaho.
In Moyle v. US, the Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a federal law—the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)—would preempt Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. Under EMTALA, any hospital that receives federal Medicare funding must provide patients with “necessary stabilizing treatment” in cases where a patient’s health is in “serious jeopardy,” but Idaho’s near-total abortion ban only carves out narrow exceptions. One of these exceptions applies to life-or-death situations, but only when the cause is physical:
The following shall not be considered criminal abortions … The abortion was performed or attempted by a physician as defined in this chapter and the physician determined, in his good faith medical judgment and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman. No abortion shall be deemed necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman because the physician believes that the woman may or will take action to harm herself.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a concurrence joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, described the distinction between the federal and Idaho laws:
To be sure, the text of the two laws differs: Idaho’s Act allows abortion only when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” … while EMTALA requires stabilizing care to prevent “serious jeopardy” to the woman’s health.
But rather than ruling on the merits and answering the question posed, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts for litigation, restricting Idaho from enforcing the law while the current legal challenges persist.
Though the court’s ruling was unsigned, several justices wrote or joined concurring or dissenting opinions. In addition to Barrett’s concurrence, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan wrote separate concurring opinions, and Justice Samuel Alito dissented.
Kagan wrote:
Because the Idaho law … prevents hospitals from doing what EMTALA commands — the Court is right to dissolve its stay of the District Court’s injunction. Doing so will again give Idaho women access to all the needed medical treatments that EMTALA guarantees.
Alito, who was joined in full in his dissent by Clarence Thomas and in part by Neil Gorsuch, argued that EMTALA’s stabilization guarantee should not be limited to the mother:
The Government’s preemption theory is plainly unsound. Far from requiring hospitals to perform abortions, EMTALA’s text unambiguously demands that Medicare funded hospitals protect the health of both a pregnant woman and her “unborn child.”
US President Joe Biden lauded the Supreme Court’s decision, saying in a statement:
Today’s Supreme Court order ensures that women in Idaho can access the emergency medical care they need while this case returns to the lower courts. No woman should be denied care, made to wait until she’s near death, or forced to flee her home state just to receive the health care she needs. This should never happen in America. Yet, this is exactly what is happening in states across the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Reproductive rights laws have shifted wildly in the two years since the US Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that held abortion was a constitutionally enshrined right. In its 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court held abortion was neither explicitly nor implicitly dealt with in the US Constitution, and determined that state voters and legislatures should decide questions of reproductive rights policy. Since then, a flurry of legislative activity has led to total bans on abortion in 14 states and bans based on gestational duration in 27, according to sexual and reproductive rights organization the Guttmacher Institute.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a bid by pro-life advocates to restrict the availability of abortion drug Mifepristone.
