WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday indicated it will uphold access to emergency abortions for pregnant patients in Idaho facing serious health risks, according a copy of the ruling that was accidentally uploaded to the court’s website.
According to Bloomberg, the justices would dismiss Idaho’s appeal, restoring a lower court order forcing the state to comply with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. Under the 1986 law, hospitals have to treat patients facing health emergencies.
To expand abortion access after the court overturned Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden declared that the law protected abortion access in states with bans against the procedure. The Supreme Court issued an emergency order letting Idaho disregard the law, only offering abortions if a pregnant patient’s life was at risk.
In the unsigned opinion obtained by Bloomberg, the justices walked back that decision, dismissing the case as improvidently granted. The document does not include an explanation from the majority but several justices wrote separately to clarify their decision.
Penning a concurrence joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, said the ruling “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when the termination of a pregnancy is needed to prevent serious harms to a woman’s health."
Kagan said the gaps between federal health protections and Idaho’s abortion ban forced hospitals to airlift medically fragile women to other states for medically necessary abortion care.
“Those transfers measure the difference between the life-threatening conditions Idaho will allow hospitals to treat and the health-threatening conditions it will not, despite EMTALA’s command,” Kagan wrote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also wrote a concurring opinion, declaring that the decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho.
“It is delay,” Jackson wrote. “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett reasoned dismissal is appropriate now because of new information uncovered during briefing and oral arguments.
“The dramatic narrowing of the dispute — especially the government’s position on abortions to address mental health and conscience exemptions for health care providers — has undercut the conclusion that Idaho would suffer irreparable harm under the preliminary injunction,” the Donald Trump appointee wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Not all of the justices agreed with the decision, however. Justice Samuel Alito called the court’s ruling baffling, suggesting that language in the statute referring to the “unborn child” prevented the law from requiring abortion care. He said the law’s text does not require hospitals to perform abortions.
“Cancer patients have the right to refuse treatment that their doctors recommend, but they do not have a right to obtain whatever treatment they want, such as the administration of a drug that cannot be legally used in this country,” the George W. Bush appointee wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. “Likewise here, a woman’s right to withhold consent to treatment related to her pregnancy does not mean that she can demand an abortion.”
The report indicated that the court’s dismissal avoided resolving the broader conflict between abortion bans and federal protections, deciding only that Idaho had to provide abortion care for pregnant patients facing health emergencies while litigation continues.
The Supreme Court’s public information office confirmed that the ruling was briefly posted online, noting “the court’s publications unit inadvertently” uploaded the document.
Follow @KelseyReichmann
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