Supreme Court justices appear split over whether to protect abortion care during emergencies

U.S. Supreme Court justices spent two hours Wednesday morning debating whether a federal law about emergency treatment encompasses abortion care even in states with strict abortion bans, with no clear indication of how they may ultimately rule.

A decision could come as soon as the end of June whether Idaho’s near-total abortion ban means doctors who might need to terminate a pregnancy during a health emergency would be protected from prosecution under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, a federal law that requires hospitals to treat patients who come to an emergency room regardless of their ability to pay. That includes treatment to prevent serious damage to bodily functions.

If the court decides the law does not provide that protection, then hospitals and doctors in Idaho have said they will have to continue transferring patients out of state for that treatment. Since January, when the court decided to take the case and struck down an injunction that provided protection under EMTALA, transfers out of state for pregnancy complications that may require termination increased from one in 2023 to six over the course of four months.

The court’s liberal wing — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — ​​questioned Idaho Deputy Attorney General Josh Turner about what EMTALA explicitly says about stabilizing treatment and whether abortion procedures fall into that definition when complications occur before a fetus can survive outside of the womb.

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2024/04/24/supreme-court-justices-appear-split-over-whether-to-protect-abortion-care-during-emergencies/