The Supreme Court Is About To Debate Whether States Can Outlaw Life-Saving Abortions

The Supreme Court this week will debate whether states have the power to outlaw life-saving abortions in hospital emergency rooms.

The court will hear Idaho v. United States on Wednesday to determine if the narrow exceptions in Idaho’s near-total abortion ban override federally mandated requirements for physicians under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). EMTALA requires hospitals that participate in Medicare — the majority of hospitals in the country — to offer abortion care if it’s necessary to stabilize the health of a pregnant patient while they’re experiencing a medical emergency.

The Department of Justice sued Idaho when the abortion ban first went into effect in 2022 because the state law is in direct conflict with EMTALA.

“This case could radically alter how emergency medicine is practiced in this country and make pregnant people second-class citizens in America’s emergency rooms,” Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, told reporters on a press call last week.

Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law by default overrides state law. But the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which repealed Roe v. Wade, left regulation of abortion to the states.

The decision will have far-reaching consequences and could give other states with narrow exceptions in abortion bans the go-ahead to adopt Idaho’s approach.

Several states, including Texas and South Dakota, have near-total abortion bans in effect that have exceptions if the pregnant patient’s life is at risk, but not if the patient’s health is at risk, conflicting with EMTALA.

“This ruling on EMTALA is going to determine — in not just Idaho, but probably in at least 10 other states — whether