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The US supreme court appears poised to allow abortions to be performed in Idaho in cases of medical emergencies for pregnant women, the news agency Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing a copy of a ruling it said was briefly posted on the court’s website.
A court spokesperson said in a statement that a document was “inadvertently and briefly uploaded” to the court’s website, and that the opinion in the case “will be issued in due course.” The justices heard arguments in the case in April.
According to the Bloomberg report, the decision would effectively reinstate a lower court’s ruling that had found that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban must yield to a 1986 US law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala) when the two statutes conflict. Emtala ensures that patients can receive emergency care at hospitals that receive funding under the federal Medicare programme.
The document that was briefly posted indicated that the court’s vote was 6-3, with conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch in dissent. According to Bloomberg, the court decided to dismiss the case after determining it should not have been granted, as opposed to resolving the underlying legal dispute.
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Liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in a separate opinion said she would not have dismissed the case, according to the document obtained by Bloomberg.
“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” judge 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.”
The court is nearing the end of its current term and is expected to release its final decisions in the coming days.
It still has major rulings pending in cases including: former president Donald Trump’s bid for immunity from prosecution; challenges to federal regulatory agencies; OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement; and laws in Florida and Texas intended to restrain social media companies from curbing content that the platforms deem objectionable.
The development on Wednesday marked the second time in two years that a major Supreme Court ruling on abortion has been disclosed before being formally issued by the justices. In May 2022, a draft of a ruling authored by justice Samuel Alito of the decision that overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade precedent that had legalised abortion nationwide was leaked a month before being formally issued.
The culprit behind that leak has never been identified.
Emtala requires hospitals that receive funding under the federal Medicare programme to “stabilise” patients with emergency medical conditions. Hospitals that violate Emtala can face lawsuits by injured patients, civil fines and potentially the loss of Medicare funding.
Following Roe’s demise, president Joe Biden’s administration issued federal guidance stating that Emtala takes precedence over state abortion bans in the relatively rare instances in which the two conflict, and filed a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s ban.
Boise-based US district judge B Lynn Winmill in 2022 blocked enforcement of Idaho’s law in cases of abortions that are needed to avoid putting the woman’s health in “serious jeopardy” or risking “serious impairment to bodily functions.”
Medical experts have said conditions that could threaten the woman’s life and health – from gestational hypertension to excessive bleeding – could require an abortion to stabilise her or avoid seizures, vital organ damage and failure, or the loss of the uterus.
The supreme court in January granted a request by Idaho officials to allow the state to enforce its law while the court also agreed to decide its legality.
Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that Americans broadly opposed Idaho's push to deny abortions to women who needed them to protect their health.
Some 77 per cent of respondents to a May poll, including 86 per cent of Democrats and 77 per cent of Republicans, said they supported requiring states with strict abortion bans to permit abortion if necessary to protect the health of a pregnant patient facing a medical emergency. – Reuters