WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for Idaho hospitals to perform emergency abortions, for now, in a procedural order that leaves key questions unanswered and could mean the issue will soon return to the conservative-majority court.
The order was accidentally posted briefly on the court’s website on Wednesday and then abruptly removed. By a 6-3 vote, it overturns the court’s previous order that allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to take effect even in medical emergencies.
Abortion is an issue that is driving the 2024 election campaign, a direct result of the court’s seismic ruling two years ago that struck down the right to abortion nationwide. But in that decision, and another that preserved access to abortion drugs, the court stopped short of issuing broader rulings.
Idaho’s decision does not answer important questions about whether doctors elsewhere can perform emergency abortions. This is a significant issue as most Republican-controlled states have limited the procedure.
In Texas, for example, an appeals court sided with the state, finding that federal health care law does not override a state ban on abortion. Complaints about pregnant patients being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas immediately spiked after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to federal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The Supreme Court took up the Idaho case after the Biden administration filed a lawsuit seeking to allow emergency abortions in which a woman’s health was seriously at risk. Idaho had argued that the law allows life-saving abortions and that the federal government was wrong to push for broader exceptions.
But the contours of the issue have changed in the months since the court agreed to hear the matter, Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote in accordance with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I am now convinced that these cases are no longer appropriate for expeditious resolution,” Barrett wrote, pointing to revisions Idaho made to its abortion ban and the Biden administration making clear it wanted emergency abortions only in rare cases allow. Kavanaugh and Barrett were both part of the majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court should have made a decision now, arguing that the earlier ruling meant doctors in Idaho were forced to watch patients suffer or be airlifted to another state for medical care.
“While this court delays and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing medical emergencies remain in a precarious position,” she said, emphasizing her position by reading a summary of her opinion aloud in court. “This court had the opportunity to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation, and we blew that opportunity.”
Her fellow liberals agreed with the resignation.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “No woman should be denied care or wait until she is near death or forced to flee her home state just to get the health care she needs.”
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that overturned Roe, disagreed with the decision to dismiss the case now. He, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, proposed that the court side with Idaho. The federal health care law “conclusively demonstrates that hospitals are not required to perform abortions,” he wrote.
The premature release of the ruling marked the second time in two years that an abortion ruling was made early, albeit under different circumstances. The court’s landmark decision ending the constitutional right to abortion was leaked to Politico.
President Joe Biden said the court’s order ensures Idaho women can get the care they need as the case continues to play out.
“Doctors must be able to practice medicine. Patients must be able to get the care they need,” he says.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said: “No woman should be denied care or wait until she is near death or forced to flee her home state to get the health care she needs.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department will continue to make its case and “use all available resources to ensure that women in every state have access to that care.”
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults support protecting access to abortions for patients who have had a miscarriage or other pregnancy-related emergency.
Dr. Kara Cadwallader, a family physician in Boise, said she hopes the ruling will allow for appropriate medical care when an Idaho patient’s health is at risk. She described a pregnant patient whose waters ruptured halfway through her pregnancy, putting her at risk for bleeding to death and sepsis. An Idaho hospital said they could not care for her because she needed an abortion and instead advised her to go to another state.
It took the patient two weeks to get an appointment in Seattle, Cadwallader said. Now patients like her can get treatment in Idaho.
“That is incredibly important for those of us who see patients locally, because we have unnecessarily sent these patients to another state for something we could easily have done for them here at home,” she said.
Abortion rights groups said the advice would bring temporary relief but leave “devastating” uncertainty about the bigger picture. “This fight is far from over,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said the Biden administration’s position had shifted and become “much more modest” than it seemed when the case was first filed. Idaho will still be able to enforce its law in the vast majority of circumstances, he said, citing Barrett’s agreement.
Still, he also expected the issue to return to the Supreme Court. “We are pretty confident that we are going to win this case in the end,” he said.
The Biden administration has also appealed the emergency abortion ruling in Texas to the Supreme Court, leaving another opportunity for the issue to come up again. It’s unlikely the justices will even consider whether to hear the Texas case before the fall.
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Associated Press journalists Fatima Hussein, Colleen Long and Amanda Seitz in Washington, Darlene Superville aboard Air Force 1, Christine Fernando in Chicago and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
