The US Supreme Court on Friday allowed Idaho to enforce its strict abortion ban, even in medical emergencies, while a legal fight continues.
The justices said they would hear arguments in April and put on hold a lower court ruling that had blocked the Idaho law in hospital emergencies, based on a lawsuit filed by the administration of US President Joe Biden.
The Idaho case gives the court its second major abortion dispute since the justices in 2022 overturned Roe v Wade and allowed states to severely restrict or ban abortion. The court also in the coming months is to hear a challenge to the US Food and Drug Administration’s rules for obtaining mifepristone, one of two medications used in the most common method of abortion in the nation.
Photo: AFP
In the case over hospital emergencies, the Biden administration has argued that hospitals that receive Medicare funds are required by federal law to provide emergency care, potentially including abortion, no matter if there is a state law banning abortion.
The administration issued guidance about the federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), two weeks after the high court ruling in 2022. The Democratic administration sued Idaho a month later.
US District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Idaho agreed with the administration, but in a separate case in Texas, a judge sided with the state.
In a statement on Friday night, Biden objected to the high court’s decision and said his administration “will continue to defend a woman’s ability to access emergency care under federal law.”
Idaho makes it a crime with a prison term of up to five years for anyone who performs or assists in an abortion.
The administration argues that EMTALA requires healthcare providers to perform abortions for emergency room patients when needed to treat an emergency medical condition, even if doing so might conflict with a state’s abortion restrictions.
Those conditions include severe bleeding, preeclampsia and some pregnancy-related infections.
“For certain medical emergencies, abortion care is the necessary stabilizing treatment,” US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in an administration filing at the Supreme Court.
The state argued that the administration was misusing a law intended to prevent hospitals from dumping patients and imposing “a federal abortion mandate” on states.
“EMTALA says nothing about abortion,” Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador told the court in a brief.
On Tuesday, the federal appeals court in New Orleans came to the same conclusion as Labrador. A three-judge panel ruled that the administration cannot use EMTALA to require hospitals in Texas to provide abortions for women whose lives are at risk due to pregnancy. Two of the three judges are appointees of former US president Donald Trump, and the other was appointed by another former Republican US president, George W. Bush.
The appeals court affirmed a ruling by US District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, also a Trump appointee. Hendrix wrote that adopting the Biden administration’s view would force physicians to place the health of the pregnant person over that of the fetus or embryo even though EMTALA “is silent as to abortion.”
After Winmill, an appointee of former Democratic US president Bill Clinton, issued his ruling, Idaho lawmakers won an order allowing the law to be fully enforced from an all-Republican, Trump-appointed panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
However, a larger contingent of 9th Circuit judges threw out the panel’s ruling and had set arguments in the case for late this month.
The justices’ order on Friday takes the case away from the appeals court. A decision is expected by early summer.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS