Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor questioned Wednesday when Idaho’s extreme law would allow emergency abortion care
The women on the Supreme Court appeared to band together Wednesday during oral arguments in a case out of Idaho that could shape how hospitals in Republican-led states respond to life-threatening pregnancy complications.
Even conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic abortion opponent, had some fierce inquiries for Idaho Solicitor General Joshua Turner, who refused to specify what medical conditions qualify for emergency abortions.
“Counsel, I’m kind of shocked actually because I thought your own expert had said below that these kinds of cases were covered. And you’re now saying they’re not?” Barrett said.
Wednesday’s case involves a ruling on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, a Reagan-era law that bars hospitals that accept Medicare from turning away anybody suffering from a medical emergency, requiring they provide stabilizing treatment or safe transport to a facility if they are unable to perform the procedure.
The problem with medical exemptions is that doctors aren’t trained nor certified to interpret legalese.
So even if the law is fairly clear, it’s just not useful
The law is written on a false non medical premise, so it’s not possible for any doctor to interpret because it’s nonsense divorced from reality.
There is no such thing as some clear line in medicine between, ah now instead of just grievous injury she will certainly die without an abortion at this point so let’s do it now and she’ll be fine. There may be black and whites at some extreme ends, but mostly there’s just a spectrum of constantly changing grey probabilities.
This is all total fiction that exists only in the head of pro lifers and the people writing these laws. Even if that fiction was reality, there’s a non zero chance that prosecutors will harass people performing abortions anyways, and they’ll bring in their own hack experts saying no that abortion wasn’t necessary, and the judgement is done by a jury of lay people not doctors with medical expertise, good chance the doctors get thrown in jail anyways in this fictional universe pro lifers have created.
There’s just no practical reality where a law that only “protects life of the mother” can exist. Legislators need to stay out of the doctors office and let pregnant individuals make the decisions with the assistance of doctors, only then can the life and health of the mother actually be protected.
💯…… ^ read what this guy said.
I’d say the law is very clear (“screw women.”)
The real problem is the law was crafted in a way specifically to create this veneer of reasonableness while making the exceptions so absurdly late that it’d be hilarious if it didn’t mean women are likely to die from it.
Agreed