From reading all of the coverage this morning, I think there is a chance that even this court might rule against Idaho here. Recall that one of the reasons why they overturned RvW is precisely because it wasn’t legislation, and they felt the court ruling went too far in establishing practices that really should be established by statute.

But here is a Federal statute that says emergency rooms need to do whatever is necessary to stabilize patients when they show up. It doesn’t mention abortion at all; it was written to make sure hospitals didn’t turn patients who needed emergency care away because they didn’t have insurance. But the statute is quite clear that these emergency rooms can’t turn away the patients, yet that is exactly what is happening in Idaho, when a pregnant woman shows up with a critical condition that can only be resolved by ending a pregnancy in distress, where the fetus is extremely unlikely to have a positive outcome regardless of any action. The action is to save the mother’s life (or her future fertility).

The Idaho lawyer seems to argue that now that abortion is fully illegal in Idaho, it is not an acceptable method of treatment in any case. But there have been several briefs from doctors that have been filed stating the opposite.

I am optimistic that they can pick off enough of the conservative majority who will give deference to the plain text in the Federal law, and give doctors there the power do do what they need to do to fix the situation. We’ll see, though.