This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. Alongside Amicus, we kicked things off this year by explaining How Originalism Ate the Law. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!)

In reversing Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Supreme Court surely imagined that it was empowering states to ban abortion. But what if, instead, Congress protected access to abortion when the procedure is urgently needed to protect a patient’s life or health? This is the core question at the heart of Moyle v. United States, one of the two major abortion cases decided by SCOTUS this term. At issue in Moyle is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires that hospitals provide stabilizing care to patients who seek treatment at an emergency room. The Biden administration argues that this includes access to abortion for patients whose life and health are on the line, even in states like Idaho, with laws that ban abortion with extremely narrow life exceptions. The court’s conservative justices seemed skeptical of that claim when they reached out earlier this year to review the question early in Moyle v. United States. But by the term’s end, they had had second thoughts and sent Moyle back to the lower courts for further development.

The court’s decision reinstates a lower-court injunction that temporarily protects emergency access in Idaho, but the decision won’t do anything to prevent the chaos in emergency obstetric care that abortion bans have unleashed in many states. In the lead-up to Moyle, horror stories facing patients in life-threatening emergencies have become all too common: Physicians in Idaho report an increasing number of patients being airlifted to other states or turned away from emergency rooms, exacerbating a physician shortage that already plagues pregnant patients in the state.

In returning the case to the lower courts, the Supreme Court divided, with several blocs of justices writing concurring opinions that show us how obstetric care under abortion bans is riven by the social-movement politics of the post-Dobbs era.

In Moyle, the court’s three liberal justices emphasized the perspective of medical........

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