Supreme Court Challenges Idaho’s Strict Abortion Bans
Idaho has had continuous strict abortion laws over the past four years, since 2020 when the state law was enacted, but only now did the Supreme Court agree to hear a provocation to Idaho’s almost total ban on abortions and anything related. The law has been partially obstructed by a federal trial judge but disputes have been scheduled for April with no reasons included; however, this is typical when justices must act on emergency appeals.
This law made an exception for women to receive abortions “necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman,” but did not mention the threats to a woman's health. The Justice Department challenged the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding to have emergency rooms ready to stabilize patients, which conflicts with Idaho’s abortion ban. Since the state ban prohibits doctors from performing abortions to stabilize patients, the law contradicts Idaho’s abortion bans. Even in threatening situations that might be eligible to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, many providers can withhold care based on a fear of criminal prosecution. If the physician provides an abortion, they will face indictment, arrest, pretrial detention, loss of medical license, a trial on felony charges, and at least two years in prison. If the physician does not perform the abortion, the pregnant woman may face severe risks to her health, such as serious sepsis resulting in limb amputation, uncontrollable uterine hemorrhage resulting in hysterectomy, kidney failure resulting in lifelong dialysis, hypoxic brain injury, or death. If this woman lives, she will have to live the remainder of her life with notable disabilities and chronic medical conditions as a result of the pregnancy complications, which no person should have to suffer with.
Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told justices under the state law that, “an emergency-room physician who concludes that a pregnant woman needs an abortion to stabilize a condition that would otherwise threaten serious and irreversible harm may not provide the necessary care unless and until the patient’s condition deteriorates to the point where an abortion is needed to save her life.” Then Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the Federal District Court in Boise went into a preliminary junction partially blocking the state law in late 2022, stating that it gave doctors a near impossible choice to make: be responsible for taking someone's life, or go to jail.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, postponed Judge Winmill’s ruling in September, reinstating Idaho’s abortion ban. The panel stated that in January any conflicts with the federal law involving the decision of the Idaho Supreme Court will interpret it to provide doctors with a wider leeway in making establishments when it is required to save a woman’s life. Lawyers for the state law wrote for the federal emergency treatment law that it “requires only that hospitals treat indigent patients the same as they treat anyone else.” The appeal added: “The only specific care the statute demands is to deliver — not abort — the child of a woman in labor, treating medical emergencies faced by ‘the unborn child’ of a pregnant woman no differently than emergencies faced by the woman herself.” The state lawmakers wrote in their appeal, “a statute that endorses delivery as stabilizing treatment and mentions unborn children four times is (to say the least) an unpromising candidate for a national abortion mandate.” With maternal death rates in Idaho up 121% since 2019, much is at stake, and pro-choice advocacy is more important than ever to protect the health, autonomy, and fundamental rights of women and medical professionals in Idaho and in other conservative states.
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