Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 15
CNN: The challenge of Idaho’s strict abortion ban and emergency care that reached the Supreme Court this year will be back in a federal appeals court on Tuesday ahead of another possible trip to the high court.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on the Biden administration’s claims that federally funded hospitals are obligated to provide abortions when pregnancy complications are jeopardizing a woman’s life or her health, even in states that prohibit the procedure.
Idaho’s abortion ban – which was partially blocked and reinstated multiple times over the course of the litigation – has an exemption for when a woman’s life is at risk, but not for when her health is imperiled in a way that stops short of being life-threatening.
The dispute over abortion access in medical emergencies could outlive the administration that brought it. Even if the incoming Trump administration no longer supports the lawsuit, it’s possible that the justices will have to consider the matter again, after punting on the issue in June.
The Biden administration is pointing to a 1986 law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, which requires hospitals that accept Medicare to treat patients in medical emergencies regardless of their ability to pay for services.
Idaho counters that the Justice Department is overreaching in its claims that the law could require the provision of abortion, with the state pointing specifically to the law’s references to “unborn child” when an emergency patient is pregnant.
The Supreme Court took up the case in January when it was at a preliminary phase, reviving the full law at the time, only to decide after hearing arguments months later that it had granted the case prematurely. The high court in a 6-3 June decision restored an order pausing the ban in medical emergencies while the litigation played out back in lower courts. Medical providers said in court filings that they were forced to airlift women out of state to receive emergency abortions in the six months that the Supreme Court allowed the Idaho ban to be fully enforced.
“What is more clear now more than ever before is that the stakes in this case could not be higher,”
said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, the deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project of the ACLU, which is supporting the Biden administration in the case.
