The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday to permit – for now – abortions to be performed in Idaho when pregnant women are facing medical emergencies, as the justices dispensed with the contentious issue without actually deciding the underlying legal issue in the case.
The 6-3 ruling revived a federal judge’s decision that a 1986 U.S. law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) takes precedence over Idaho’s Republican-backed near-total abortion ban when the two conflict.
EMTALA requires hospitals that receive funds under the federal Medicare program to “stabilize” patients with emergency medical conditions.
President Joe Biden’s administration had sued Idaho over its abortion law. Idaho is among six states with abortion bans that offer no exceptions to protect the health of pregnant women.
A version of the ruling – an unsigned, one-line order – was inadvertently posted to the court’s website on Wednesday in the second instance in the past two years of the disclosure of a major abortion decision before its formal issuance.
“Today’s Supreme Court order ensures that women in Idaho can access the emergency medical care they need while this case returns to the lower courts,” Biden said in a statement. “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. This should never happen in America.”
