Supreme Court allows emergency abortions in Idaho

In a new ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has now allowed access to emergency abortions in Idaho.

Jennifer Piatt, a research scholar at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, joined “Arizona Horizon” to talk more about this ruling.

The outcome turned out to be a non-decision in the ruling. However, abortions can only occur if the person or life is in peril in Idaho. 

“It was very much a non-decision today so we have a case involving a conflict of a federal law and EMTALA, which requires emergency stabilizing medical treatment of emergency conditions. The U.S. government says this can include abortions when the health or the life of a person is in danger. We have Idaho state law that says abortions can only happen when the life of a person is in danger, so that health and that life really came to a head, and the court was really aiming at trying to say whether EMTALA does in fact and preempt and get rid of Idaho’s law in this instance,” said Piatt. 

A lower court determined this decision, and there are going to be certain circumstances that the state of Idaho has to allow for physicians. 

“Idaho is going to have to allow physicians in the state to provide emergency health preserving abortions as well as emergency life preserving ones,” said Piatt. 

A number of justices believe it’s too early to become involved in the ruling, and that it needs to be solidified. 

“Some of the arguments in those attached decisions, like for example Justice Barrett, the Chief Justice and Justice Kavanaugh, all said it seems like the arguments in this case are still actually developing, and they were kind of changing during oral argument, and so maybe we need these arguments to solidify at the lower court level before we get involved,” said Piatt.