The Supreme Court heard oral argument last week in Idaho v. United States, a case that pits state law against federal law in a clash between a strict abortion ban and the protection of women’s health in emergency situations. Unlike Roe v. Wade and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which addressed whether women have a constitutional right to decide for themselves whether to terminate a pregnancy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, this case is about statutory law.
Idaho enacted a statute that bans emergency care that includes pregnancy termination except to save the life of the mother. Under the federal Emergency Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), hospitals that receive federal funding must provide “stabilizing treatment” for “emergency medical conditions” — even if it ends the pregnancy.
The space between being “near death’s door” and at “actual death’s door” is what the dispute is all about: Who gets to draw the line, the state of Idaho or the federal government? How the court answers that question has implications that are hard to even fathom.
If the court sides with Idaho, at least a dozen additional states’ draconian anti-abortion laws would also swallow EMTALA, forcing pregnant women who need urgent medical treatment in those states to go elsewhere. As Justice Elena Kagan noted at oral argument, in Idaho alone six severely ill women have already been airlifted by helicopter out of the state for emergency care this year. The penalty for getting the “near death”........