The U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 dismissed an abortion-related case on a technicality, a result that Americans United said fails to protect reproductive freedom.
The lawsuit concerned the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a law that requires hospitals to provide certain types of stabilizing care for people facing medical emergencies, including pregnant patients.
Officials in Idaho argued that the law conflicted with state law that bans most abortions. In its ruling in two cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, the high court dismissed the cases, declaring that they were “improvidently” granted.
The court’s decision means that Idaho doctors can provide abortion care – for now. But since the ruling was not on the merits, the issue could resurface.
“Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule definitively that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care to pregnant patients in Idaho and other states with abortion bans,” said Americans United President and CEO Rachel Laser in a media statement. “The court has left these patients’ rights in limbo while litigation toils on in the lower courts. If America is to make good on its promise of religious freedom, no one should be denied urgent care because of someone else’s religious views. Every single one of us must be free to make our own decisions about our own bodies based on our own beliefs.
“The ultra-conservative bloc of the Supreme Court has been advancing the dangerous agenda of Christian Nationalists who want to force us all to live by their narrow beliefs,” added Laser. “Overturning Roe v. Wade was just the start. Today’s decision does not halt the emboldened religious extremists who are endangering people’s lives by banning abortion and enshrining one narrow religious viewpoint into law.”
She concluded, “The Christian Nationalist Project 2025 agenda, which attacks the right to abortion and contraceptives, LGBTQ+ equality and democracy, not surprisingly includes the goal of taking away EMTALA protections for pregnant patients. We must not let Christian Nationalists win. Our basic freedoms, our lives and the future of our democracy are all at stake. Church-state separation is the antidote to Christian Nationalism. Americans United is calling for a national recommitment to separate church and state.”
Americans United joined more than 100 reproductive rights, civil rights, religious and other social justice organizations in a friend-of-the-court brief that urged the Supreme Court to affirm that EMTALA guarantees everyone the right to emergency medical treatment nationwide, including pregnant people who may require abortion care to stabilize emergency medical conditions.
Idaho’s abortion ban, AU argued, directly conflicts with this nearly 40-year-old federal law, endangering the health and lives of pregnant people, especially Black, Indigenous and other people of color, LGBTQ+ people, people working to make ends meet and others who already face excessive barriers to health care.