Originally published by The 19th.

The Supreme Court will allow Idaho hospital physicians to provide abortions when they are needed in medical emergencies, the court ruled Thursday, in an opinion that was briefly made public Wednesday and reported by Bloomberg.

The writing represents a meaningful — if temporary — victory for health care providers. The court has dismissed the case and returned it to lower courts for further litigation. This would lift a temporary stay the Supreme Court had previously issued on a lower court ruling, which blocked the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, from applying to abortions in Idaho.

The case concerns whether EMTALA trumps individual state abortion bans. The law requires that hospitals participating in the federal Medicare program provide patients at the emergency room with necessary treatment, regardless of their ability to pay. The Department of Justice has argued that the law requires hospitals to provide abortion in cases where doctors determine it is the needed emergency treatment — and that in those cases, the federal law supersedes state bans.

The court did not weigh in on the specific legal question of whether EMTALA trumps state abortion bans. But for now, it........

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