The US Supreme Court on Thursday, June 27, affirmed a lower court injunction that allows abortion to continue in Idaho in cases of medical emergencies. This comes a day after the Supreme Court accidentally released an opinion that hinted abortions will be allowed in the state in such cases. The opinion was later taken off the internet.
Idaho is a state known to have very strict restrictions in place. The case will now go back to a lower court to be further evaluated. However, for the time being, doctors will be allowed to perform emergency abortions.
The latest developments
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson objected to the court failing to decide the case. She read her dissenting opinion from the bench, saying, “There is simply no good reason not to resolve this conflict now.”
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito agreed in a dissenting opinion, and was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch. In fact, Alito suggested he would rule against the Joe Biden administration, which said the law conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) of 1986. This law demands that all emergency room physicians at hospitals that receive Medicare funds offer “stabilizing treatment” to patients whose health is at stake.
“Here, no one who has any respect for statutory language can plausibly say that the government’s interpretation is unambiguously correct,” Alito wrote.
A five-justice bloc of conservative and liberal justices went on to vote against deciding the case. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that the “shape of these cases has substantially shifted” ever since the court said it would like to hear two linked appeals from the state and elected officials. According to Liberal Justice Elena Kagan, Idaho’s arguments “have never justified … our early consideration of this dispute.”
Idaho’s Defense of Life Act, which took effect in August 2022, prohibits almost all abortions, except reported cases of rape or incest or when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
