WASHINGTON – Abortion rights advocates landed a win Thursday when the Supreme Court ruled emergency abortions can resume in Idaho, but many criticized the court for punting on the larger issues at stake.
The high court dismissed the case as “improvidently granted,” but, the justices did not weigh in on the underlying issue: whether a federal law mandating doctors provide stabilizing care overrides state abortion bans like Idaho’s.
President Joe Biden said the decision ensures that women in Idaho get necessary emergency medical care as litigation continues.
“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,” Biden said in a statement. “This should never happen in America.”
The news comes more than a week after the Supreme Court decided unanimously to toss a challenge brought by anti-abortion doctors, maintaining the status quo for the abortion drug mifepristone. Abortion advocates responded to this earlier win with a similarly tepid response.
Abortion opponents also expressed disappointment with the ruling and criticized the Biden administration’s interpretation of federal law.
In the short term, the decision means access to emergency abortion will be restored for pregnant patients in Idaho, but it’s not a major victory for people invested on either side of the abortion debate, according to Mary Ziegler, professor of law at the University of California, Davis.
“The court may rule on the merits later, but nobody really won,” she said. “The court just said, ‘We’ll get back to you after the election.’ That’s pretty much all that happened here.”
Partisans on both sides of abortion disappointed in the ruling
On Wednesday, after a copy of the draft opinion was obtained by Bloomberg News, Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said the danger is still imminent for pregnant mothers in need of emergency care. She said in a statement the decision the draft appeared “to leave the door open for the Supreme Court to end emergency abortion care in the coming months or years.”
“It is only a small measure of justice that for now people in Idaho can continue to access the care that they need – victory will only happen when abortion is completely legal, available, and accessible for everyone, everywhere in the country,” she said.
Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, echoed that sentiment in an email, saying, “It is clear that pregnant people are not out of the woods — not by a longshot.”
“Make no mistake: The Supreme Court had the opportunity to hold once-and-for-all that every pregnant person has the basic right to emergency abortion care, but it appears it failed to do so,” she wrote. “As a result, the health and lives of pregnant people across the country will continue to be at risk.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, also expressed disappointment in the decision, saying that the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is “forcing states that respect preborn life to commit abortions in emergency rooms.”
“States have every right to treat TWO patients in an emergency room when a pregnant mother comes in for help, but by inserting the issues of ambiguous ‘health’ and infertility possibilities, the law is being stretched in favor of abortion,” Hawkins said in a statement Thursday.
Katie Glenn Daniel, State Policy Director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement Wednesday following news of the draft version of the ruling that “the Idaho Supreme Court correctly ruled that women can receive miscarriage care and a woman’s life does not need to be in immediate danger for doctors to act.”
“The Biden administration’s EMTALA charade is a PR stunt to spread the lie that pro-life laws prevent women from receiving emergency care,” she said.
What was the focus of the EMTALA case?
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion rights advocates warned that medical exceptions included in some state bans are unnecessarily vague and doctors said they can no longer provide abortions for patients facing serious health consequences unless their lives are clearly in danger.
President Joe Biden directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to clarify that the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires doctors to provide abortions when necessary in emergencies to prevent death or serious illness. Texas challenged that directive, and simultaneously the Justice Department challenged Idaho’s law, which prohibits abortion unless a patient’s life is in danger or in cases where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
In court, the Biden administration argued that hospitals receiving Medicare funds must provide emergency abortions if they are necessary to protect the health of the patient. Idaho responded in court that states have always been responsible for licensing doctors and setting the scope of their professional practice; post-Dobbs, its policy would not be different.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas, restricting emergency care, while the 9th Circuit sided with the Biden administration, opening the door to such interventions in Idaho. In January, the Supreme Court allowed Idaho to fully enforce its new restrictions while it considered the issue. The ruling this week, allows doctors in Idaho to resume providing emergency abortions when necessary. In Texas, the ban on all but lifesaving abortions remains in place.
Ziegler, the Davis law professor, said now that the Idaho case has been returned to the 9th Circuit, it is possible the Texas case could be appealed to the Supreme Court, but she said it’s likely the high court will let the issue percolate in the lower courts before weighing in again.
Ultimately, as with the earlier decision on mifepristone, the court appears to be “kicking the can down the road” on abortion issues, she said. And it’s possible the court may not have to rule on the issue if Biden loses the election in November and a new president withdraws the federal guidance on EMTALA.
“It seems quite likely that the court will probably come back in later,” she said. “The only way that might not happen, which is completely realistic, is if the polls are correct and Donald Trump becomes the president.”
Contributing: Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY; Bayliss Wagner, The Austin-American Statesman.
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