The Supreme Court appears poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho if a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk, according to Bloomberg News, which reported that a copy of the decision was briefly posted on the court’s website on Wednesday.
Bloomberg’s filing suggests the Supreme Court should not have been so hasty in stepping into the case and would reinstate lower court orders that allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect the health of pregnant patients. It seems unlikely that the issues at the heart of the case will be fully resolved.
The Supreme Court acknowledged on Wednesday that the document was posted in error. It was quickly removed.
“The court’s publications department mistakenly uploaded documents to the court’s website for a short period of time. The court’s decisions in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be released in the coming days,” court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement.
If the Supreme Court dismisses the case, the case will continue in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The judges’ decision has not yet been officially announced, so the ruling may not be the court’s final decision.
The Biden administration sued Idaho, arguing that in rare emergency situations that put pregnant patients at serious risk, hospitals must perform abortions to stabilize their condition.
Most Republican-controlled states began tightening restrictions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. Idaho is one of 14 states that ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with very limited exceptions. Idaho argued that its ban allows pregnant patients to have abortions to save their lives, and that federal law does not need to expand the exceptions.
The opinion, published briefly in the 2018 issue of CNN, overturns an earlier Supreme Court order that allowed Idaho’s law to go into effect even in medical emergencies while the case proceeds. Doctors in Idaho said several women have had to be airlifted out of state to avoid infection, bleeding or other serious health risks in cases where abortion is a routine procedure.
The Supreme Court’s eventual decision could have a ripple effect on emergency care in other states with strict abortion bans. Federal documents obtained by The Associated Press show that reports of pregnant women being refused care in U.S. emergency rooms spiked after the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit was filed under federal laws that require hospitals that accept Medicare to provide stabilization care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay: the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
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.
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.
Whitehurst is a contributor to The Associated Press.
