This Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard yet another case regarding reproductive care– this time, regarding the alleged clash between Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, and a federal law known as EMTALA.
Idaho’s trigger law, first passed in 2020, went into immediate effect following the court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. The law bans all abortions after 6 weeks, effectively a complete ban, with limited exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. It lacks an exception to protect the mother’s health.
EMTALA, or the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, requires all hospitals that receive Medicaid and Medicare funding to provide stabilizing care to any patient whose life or health is in serious danger when they arrive at the emergency room, regardless of their insurance status. If the hospital cannot provide the care, it is required to provide safe transport to another that can. The core of the argument in the case is this: under President Biden’s administration, abortions are considered a part of the stabilizing care that EMTALA requires medical facilities to provide. The administration is thus arguing that Idaho’s law, which threatens anyone who performs or aids in an abortion with two to five years in prison, prevents ER doctors from performing an abortion if it were needed in a medical emergency.
The clash in law has resulted in numerous patients being airlifted out of state to receive necessary care that Idaho hospitals cannot provide. St. Luke’s Health System filed an amicus brief in the case, reporting that since January, when the Supreme Court lifted an injunction that provided shielding to doctors who performed emergency care, 6 patients have needed to be airlifted across state lines.
In addition to delaying necessary care, these out-of-state transfers can rack up large costs for their patients. The costs of the flights can go upwards of 10,000 dollars, and if that flight is considered out of network by insurance, patients are left to shoulder the financial burden themselves .
Idaho’s attorney general Raúl Labrador questioned those accounts this Wednesday, saying “It’s really hard for me to conceive of a single instance where a woman has to be airlifted out of Idaho to perform an abortion.”
In total, the case is a test of whether or not states can prevent a pregnant woman from receiving what her doctors say is an essential treatment if her overall health, but not her life, is in imminent danger.
The outcome of the case is unclear as of yet, but it seems to have sharply divided the court. After three hours of deliberations on Wednesday, only the three liberal justices seemed to back the Biden Administration’s interpretation that the 40-year-old federal law can require hospitals to provide the care and trump the recently passed ban.
For now, doctors and patients alike wait anxiously to hear the court’s decision. Jack Resneck, the former president of the American Medical Association said in a statement Monday that its “dangerous standard cannot be applied to the real-life situations faced in emergency departments every day. There is no bright line when each patient’s condition suddenly reaches ‘life-threatening,’ and deteriorating patients don’t want their physicians delaying care.”
