'Not a victory' but a 'delay': Supreme Court punts on Idaho emergency abortion
As accidentally previewed Wednesday, the Supreme Court Thursday decided to allow emergency abortions to continue in Idaho. Instead of deciding Moyle v. United States on merits—should federal law say emergency room doctors can provide abortions to stabilize pregnant patients—the court dismissed the case as “improvidently granted,” meaning they shouldn’t have taken it in the first place while it was still being litigated. They are sending it back down to the lower courts. Additionally, it reinstated an injunction that requires Idaho to allow abortions in the case of major health crises. That’s kicking the can down the road. A cynical person would say the conservatives are postponing making a decision about saving pregnant people’s lives until after the election for political purposes, to avoid a repeat of the Dobbs fallout from 2022. They’d likely be right. The decision is 5-4, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to dismiss the dispute from their docket, for now. That means that pregnant patients in Idaho won’t have to be airlifted out of the state for abortions to save their health and lives because doctors there don’t have to worry—as much—about being prosecuted for saving them. It is a small relief for doctors in Idaho. “This teeny tiny little carveout allows us as physicians in very specific scenarios to provide the care and hopefully not Life Flight people out of the state so they can go somewhere else to get the care that we can easily provide here, but it does not fix our problem here,” Dr. Loren Colson told the Idaho Capital Sun. “We still have a huge problem when it comes to being able to access abortion.” At least six pregnant patients have been flown out of Idaho for abortions since the Supreme Court lifted the stay on Idaho’s ban on emergency abortions in January. Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson acknowledged this in her partial dissent. She wanted a decision now, on the merits. “[T]o be clear: Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” she wrote. “While this Court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.” This Court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation, and we have squandered it. And for as long as we refuse to declare what the law requires, pregnant patients in Idaho, Texas, and elsewhere will be paying the price. Because we owe them—and the Nation—an answer to the straightforward pre-emption question presented in these cases, I respectfully dissent. Also in dissent—on the opposite side in favor of torturing women—are Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch. Alito is typically ghoulish and sneering toward his colleagues, calling them too “emotional” about the issue. “[T]he Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents,” he wrote. As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern writes, his dissent “is unyielding in its cruel disregard for women’s health; he acknowledged, for instance, that Idaho’s ban may require doctors to stand by and wait for a pregnant patient to develop ‘infection and serious risk of sepsis’ before terminating her failing pregnancy.” The case is going to come back to the court since litigation continues. Barring a dramatic shift on the court, Alito will likely prevail. The court did, after all, refuse to keep the lower court’s injunction on Idaho’s ban in place for months while it was deciding what to do about it. It’s also possible that Donald Trump will win in November, and the case will be mooted. Project 2025 explicitly says the Department of Health and Human Services should reverse its guidance on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, that puts the lives and health of pregnant women above the fetus. RELATED STORIES: The Supreme Court is hearing another abortion case. What could go wrong? What happens when emergency rooms refuse to treat pregnant women 'Idaho isn’t a safe place to practice medicine anymore,' doctors flee strict abortion ban Campaign Action
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As accidentally previewed Wednesday, the Supreme Court Thursday decided to allow emergency abortions to continue in Idaho. Instead of deciding Moyle v. United States on merits—should federal law say emergency room doctors can provide abortions to stabilize pregnant patients—the court dismissed the case as “improvidently granted,” meaning they shouldn’t have taken it in the first place while it was still being litigated. They are sending it back down to the lower courts. Additionally, it reinstated an injunction that requires Idaho to allow abortions in the case of major health crises.
That’s kicking the can down the road. A cynical person would say the conservatives are postponing making a decision about saving pregnant people’s lives until after the election for political purposes, to avoid a repeat of the Dobbs fallout from 2022. They’d likely be right.
The decision is 5-4, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to dismiss the dispute from their docket, for now. That means that pregnant patients in Idaho won’t have to be airlifted out of the state for abortions to save their health and lives because doctors there don’t have to worry—as much—about being prosecuted for saving them. It is a small relief for doctors in Idaho.
“This teeny tiny little carveout allows us as physicians in very specific scenarios to provide the care and hopefully not Life Flight people out of the state so they can go somewhere else to get the care that we can easily provide here, but it does not fix our problem here,” Dr. Loren Colson told the Idaho Capital Sun. “We still have a huge problem when it comes to being able to access abortion.”
At least six pregnant patients have been flown out of Idaho for abortions since the Supreme Court lifted the stay on Idaho’s ban on emergency abortions in January.
Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson acknowledged this in her partial dissent. She wanted a decision now, on the merits. “[T]o be clear: Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” she wrote. “While this Court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”
This Court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation, and we have squandered it. And for as long as we refuse to declare what the law requires, pregnant patients in Idaho, Texas, and elsewhere will be paying the price. Because we owe them—and the Nation—an answer to the straightforward pre-emption question presented in these cases, I respectfully dissent.
Also in dissent—on the opposite side in favor of torturing women—are Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch. Alito is typically ghoulish and sneering toward his colleagues, calling them too “emotional” about the issue. “[T]he Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents,” he wrote.
As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern writes, his dissent “is unyielding in its cruel disregard for women’s health; he acknowledged, for instance, that Idaho’s ban may require doctors to stand by and wait for a pregnant patient to develop ‘infection and serious risk of sepsis’ before terminating her failing pregnancy.”
The case is going to come back to the court since litigation continues. Barring a dramatic shift on the court, Alito will likely prevail. The court did, after all, refuse to keep the lower court’s injunction on Idaho’s ban in place for months while it was deciding what to do about it.
It’s also possible that Donald Trump will win in November, and the case will be mooted. Project 2025 explicitly says the Department of Health and Human Services should reverse its guidance on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, that puts the lives and health of pregnant women above the fetus.
RELATED STORIES:
The Supreme Court is hearing another abortion case. What could go wrong?
What happens when emergency rooms refuse to treat pregnant women
'Idaho isn’t a safe place to practice medicine anymore,' doctors flee strict abortion ban
