Supreme Court | Key decision on abortion published ‘inadvertently’

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to temporarily allow emergency abortions when a woman’s health is at risk in Idaho, according to a copy of what appears to be the ruling that briefly appeared on the court’s website Wednesday.

The decision, unsigned, dismisses the case on procedural grounds, saying the Supreme Court will not address the merits of the dispute at this time, according to the 22-page document, which was published by Bloomberg News. Such a ruling would restore a lower federal court ruling that suspended Idaho’s near-total abortion ban and said the state’s hospitals could perform emergency abortions, if necessary to protect the health of the mother.

The case focuses on whether a federal law requiring emergency care for any patient trumps Idaho’s strict ban on abortion, which allows the procedure only in rare exceptions, including when the life of the pregnant woman is in danger.

It was unclear whether the document was final, and a Supreme Court spokeswoman said only that a ruling in the joined cases Moyle v. United States And Idaho v. United States would eventually be published.

The unsigned decision, described as “per curiam”, that is to say “by the Court”, is divided 6 to 3. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a partial agreement and a partial dissent. She writes that she would have held that federal law trumped Idaho’s strict ban, adding that she believed the Supreme Court should immediately consider the issue rather than sending it back to the lower court.

The liberal justices, as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, all wrote or joined in concurring opinions. Three of the Court’s conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, disagreed.

The document posted online is dated June 26. But the Court announced only two decisions that morning. None concerned abortion.

Maintain access to emergency abortions

If the document reflects a final decision, it would be the second time this year that the justices have avoided ruling on the merits of abortion. The ruling released Wednesday, which said the case had been “inappropriately granted,” suggested that the judges would not rule on the merits, but would simply say that access to emergency abortions would be maintained while the case proceeds.

In her concurring opinion, Justice Elena Kagan said the ruling “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when terminating a pregnancy is necessary to prevent serious harm to a woman’s health “.

According to her, the federal law in question, known asEmergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act“unambiguously requires” that hospitals receiving federal funds provide any medical treatment necessary to stabilize a patient.

Ketanji Brown Jackson agrees with that assessment. When it agreed to hear the case, the Supreme Court also allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to temporarily go into effect, setting off what she described as a months-long, completely unnecessary “catastrophe.” Doctors in the state “were forced to stand aside and watch their patients suffer, or arrange for their patients to be flown out of Idaho,” she added.

However, she departed from the majority by stating that a rejection on procedural grounds should not become a means for the Court to postpone certain issues.

“We cannot simply go back in time to the situation before the Court became involved in this matter,” Justice Jackson wrote. There is simply no good reason not to resolve this conflict now. »

A question “ripe for a decision”

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Alito acknowledged that the Court should have ruled on the merits of the case, calling its dismissal a puzzling reversal.

“This issue is as ripe for decision as it will ever be,” Mr. Alito wrote. Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy, but emotional and highly politicized issue that this case presents. It’s regrettable. »

For him, he writes, federal law “does not require hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law.” Rather, he added, it requires hospitals receiving Medicare funding “to treat, not abort, an ‘unborn child’.”

M^me Barrett seemed to find common ground. Although she wrote that she agreed with the dismissal, the scope of Idaho law had “changed significantly – twice” since the trial began and the parties’ positions had “rendered the extent of the dispute unclear, at best.”

Her concurring opinion echoes questions she asked during oral argument, when she focused on under what circumstances state law would allow emergency abortions and under which such procedures would be prohibited .

Although abortion rights advocates welcomed the apparent outcome of the Idaho case, they cautioned that it was not a resounding victory.

“If the leaked notice is accurate, it is clear that pregnant women are not out of the woods, far from it,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project. American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project.

“Make no mistake: The Supreme Court had the opportunity to affirm once and for all that every pregnant person has a fundamental right to emergency care in the event of an abortion, but it appears that it did not. did not do. »

Expanded ruling in Idaho case could have implications for more than a dozen states that have enacted near-total bans since the Court overturned the ruling Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The federal Emergency Care Act was seen as one of the few — and narrow — avenues the Biden administration had to challenge state abortion bans and preserve access, although the legal battle only affects a limited number and type of patients.

Idaho had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after an 11-member appeals court panel on 9^e circuit temporarily blocked the law. By agreeing to hear the case, the justices reinstated the ban.

This article was published in the New York Times.

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