Mistakenly posted Supreme Court document indicates pregnant people in Idaho should have access to emergency care – for now

A document that was mistakenly posted on the US Supreme Court website Wednesday indicates that the court may allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, at least temporarily. The state will not be allowed to deny an emergency abortion to a pregnant person whose health is in danger, at least while the case makes its way through the courts.

A document that was mistakenly posted on the US Supreme Court website Wednesday indicates that the court may allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, at least temporarily. The state would not be allowed to deny an emergency abortion to a pregnant person whose health is in danger, at least while the case makes its way through the courts. The posting was first reported by Bloomberg News. It’s unclear whether it’s the final version that the court will issue in the coming days. “Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a separate opinion Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. “It is a delay.” Because Idaho’s strict ban does not allow a doctor to perform an abortion if the patient’s health is in danger from the pregnancy itself in most circumstances, the Biden administration argues, the law violates the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, also known as EMTALA. EMTALA requires all US hospitals that have received Medicare money — essentially nearly all of them — to screen everyone who comes into their emergency rooms to determine whether the person has an emergency medical condition without regard for their ability to pay for those services. The 1986 law requires hospitals, to the best of their ability, to stabilize anyone with an emergency medical condition or to transfer them to another facility that has that capacity. The hospitals must also treat these patients “until the emergency medical condition is resolved or stabilized.”