A divided Supreme Court seemed skeptical Wednesday that federal law can require hospitals to provide emergency abortion care in states with strict bans on the procedure, in the latest legal battle over access to abortion since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago.

Throughout two hours of argument, only the court’s three liberal justices strongly backed the Biden administration’s view that a 40-year-old emergency-care law preempts Idaho’s strict ban, which imposes penalties of up to five years in prison on doctors who perform the procedure, with an exception when “necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman.”

The liberal justices repeatedly raised detailed, harrowing examples of women facing health emergencies short of death, including infertility and kidney failure, and said pregnant women in Idaho were being forced out of state for emergency abortion care in violation of federal law.

Conservative justices, who make up the majority of the court, pushed back on the Biden administration’s interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and suggested that the federal government cannot force private hospitals that receive federal funds to violate a state’s law.

“How can you impose restrictions on what Idaho can criminalize?” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked the solicitor general.