Supreme Court issues decision on emergency abortion care case

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The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law. The decision temporarily allows abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho.

It comes a day after the opinion was inadvertently posted on the court’s website in an astonishing breach of protocol, marking the second time a major SCOTUS abortion ruling has been made public prematurely.

Here’s what happened on Thursday:

6-3 decision: The unsigned opinion released Thursday drew a flurry of concurrences from conservative and liberal justices. Though the decision was technically a loss for Idaho, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed in a partial dissent that the potential impact is likely to be short-lived. “Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho,” Jackson wrote. “It is delay.” 

If the Supreme Court wants to revisit the issues raised in the Idaho abortion case, it won’t have to wait very long — there is already an appeal pending on its docket from Texas.

The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas this year in its challenge to the same federal hospital law at issue in the Idaho case. The Biden administration appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court but asked the justices to hold the petition until the court resolved the dispute in Idaho.

The case will be fully briefed this summer and could be granted this fall, which would allow the court to consider a similar question after the November election.

The Texas case has received considerable attention in recent days because abortion rights groups have noted that by not resolving the underlying questions raised in Idaho, the court has left those same issues pending in Texas, where lower courts have ruled against the Biden’s administration’s effort to require abortions in cases where the health of the pregnant woman is at stake.

Idaho’s Democratic Party Chair Lauren Necochea warned that even with the Supreme Court ruling ensuring emergency abortion care in the state, Idaho still struggles to retain medical talent in maternal care.

Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, president of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare, said the “state’s health care system is in crisis,” given that over 20% of the obstetricians in the state have stopped practicing.

She’s a family physician who has practiced medicine in rural Idaho for more than 20 years.

Sen. Patty Murray speaks during a news conference on June 18, in Washington, DC.

Despite a ruling that would ensure emergency abortion care in Idaho, Democrats are continuing to criticize the broader lack of abortion access nationwide and the ambiguity that many health care providers experience.

Democratic members issued a variety of reactions to the ruling, which involves a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA):

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer and Ted Barrett contributed to this story.

This post has been updated with additional information.

In its ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court decided that it should not have taken up the case and dismissed the appeal over Idaho’s abortion ban. Abortion rights opponents are viewing this as a roadblock, not a final decision on the ban.

“The outcome here is simply procedural in nature,” said Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. She also praised Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent and his interpretation that “Medicare-funded hospitals (must) protect the health of both a pregnant woman and her ‘unborn child.’”

These groups have set their sights on the upcoming lower court arguments, maintaining their position that a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act — or EMTALA — does not safeguard abortion access.

Legal scholars have also highlighted a case in Texas that challenges the state’s abortion ban in cases of medical emergencies as another abortion dispute that the Supreme Court may intervene in.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said reproductive health care remains “under attack” in the US, with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade still impacting women.

Becerra said when the court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, “it unleashed an unprecedented assault on reproductive rights, and every day we see the consequences.”

“We will continue to uphold the law and the right to emergency care, to inform people of their rights under EMTALA, and to make it easier for someone denied care to file a complaint,” he added.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks during a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on March 26.

The Biden campaign is planning to air an abortion-focused ad during one of the commercials breaks in CNN’s presidential debate tonight, a campaign official told CNN.

The push comes as President Joe Biden is looking to use the debate to draw a contrast with former President Donald Trump on the issue of reproductive rights. 

Democrats believe abortion rights can prove galvanizing for voters in November and have worked relentlessly to tie new restrictions on the procedure to Trump, accusing him of fomenting “cruelty and chaos” following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Biden’s campaign ads have often included personal testimonials from women impacted by state abortions bans. Following the Supreme Court’s dismissal of an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, the campaign released a new TV spot featuring an Idaho obstetrician who left her state out of fear of potential criminal charges for treating patients with the restriction in place.

“These laws are truly barbaric. They are putting us back decades, if not centuries,” Dr. Lauren Miller says in the ad. “Donald Trump did this. He put women’s lives in danger.”                   

The Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, on June 1.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed emergency abortions in Idaho – for now – by blocking enforcement of the state’s law that bans abortions except for the life of the pregnant woman.

Here are some key quotes from today’s ruling:

Concurrence by Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and in part by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Concurrence by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh

US Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference on May 23, in Washington, DC.

Today’s Supreme Court order restores federally guaranteed access to emergency care to women in Idaho while the Justice Department continues to litigate the case, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Thursday.

“The Justice Department will continue to use every available tool to ensure that women in every state have access to that care,” he said.

The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s abortion ban Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTLA) guarantees essential emergency care to all Americans, regardless of the state they live in, Garland said in a statement released by the Department of Justice.

While the Supreme Court ruling does temporarily protect the right to emergency abortions in Idaho, abortion rights proponents have been quick to point out that this decision does not guarantee universal access to the procedure.

Groups have noted because the justices declined to resolve the underlying questions raised by the case, the question will almost certainly return — potentially as early as this fall.

“The Court kicked the can down the road,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement to CNN. “The Supreme Court created this health care crisis by overturning Roe v. Wade and should have decided the issue.”

Reproductive Freedom for All CEO Mini Timmaraju said that the court was “punting so that they didn’t need to weigh in before an election.” She also highlighted the contrast between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on the issue, encouraging abortion-rights voters to cast their ballots for the incumbent president.

The American Civil Liberties Union also decried the decision, with deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project Alexa Kolbi-Molinas calling it “a dangerous preview for what could come.”

“This is not a time for applause,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said on a call with reporters. “This is the bare minimum that pregnant people and providers in Idaho deserve.”

The court’s decision blocks Idaho from enforcing its strict on ban on abortions in emergency rooms, but the groups have noted because the justices declined to resolve the underlying questions raised by the case, the question will almost certainly return – potentially as early as this fall.

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, accused the court of treating “women’s lives like hot potato.”

“It is clear that the court is seeking to avoid accountability in a critical year and is leaving the door wide open” to overturn further rights in the future, she said.

For context: With ballot initiatives being put to voters across battleground states this November, these groups will likely use this ruling to rally support for reproductive healthcare. Similar ballot initiatives have been successful in guaranteeing abortion access in traditionally conservative states such as Kansas and Ohio.

This post has been updated to include additional statements.

Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, expressed relief at the Supreme Court’s decision allowing pregnant people in Idaho to access emergency abortion care. However, she also noted that more needs to be done to overturn the state’s abortion ban and highlighted that doctors were still experiencing “interference” and confusion.

“The entire ACOG community is breathing a little easier today, especially our colleagues from Idaho who’ve been suffering alongside their patients for the last two years,” Dantas said at a news conference on Thursday.

Dr. Nisha Verma, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Georgia, said the decision fell short of addressing the medical complexities and led to confusion, fear and delays in care.

“What we had really hoped for is the Supreme Court to come down very firmly that doctors should be able to provide care for patients, including in emergency situations where abortion care can often be needed to stabilize patients. I think that working here in Georgia, we are constantly in a state of confusion trying to navigate incredibly confusing laws with exceptions that just don’t make sense on the ground, that don’t take into consideration all of the complexity that we deal with every day,” Verma said.

The Supreme Court has announced it will issue opinions on Monday.

This means the high court plans to release opinions Friday and Monday (at 10 a.m. ET both days) — and could still add another day next week.

While the Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban Thursday is a “technical win,” it is not a win for health equity, the director of the NAACP Center for Health Equity said Thursday.

The court’s ruling in favor of the Biden administration will ensure people in Idaho can access emergency abortion care.

Pernell called the Supreme Court ruling a “kick-the-can kind of moment” that still leaves women’s health in the US in peril.

“The Supreme Court missed an opportunity,” Pernell said, to make a decision that was “clearly and compellingly in the favor of the universal rights of all people, especially women – and that didn’t happen.”

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on reproductive rights on June 24, in College Park, Maryland.

Despite the fact that the Idaho Supreme Court ruling ensures Idaho women can access emergency abortion care, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been using the opportunity to blast Donald Trump and nationalize the issue of abortion.

Harris criticized Trump in a statement Thursday blaming him for “abortion bans” enacted when he was president. 

The decision was 6-3. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented, while Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh sided with liberal justices in the majority.

President Joe Biden’s campaign instantly seized upon a Supreme Court decision on emergency abortion care Thursday, releasing a new television ad featuring a personal testimonial from a high-risk obstetrician from Idaho.

The doctor left her state out of fear of facing potential criminal charges for treating patients amid a strict abortion ban the state.

The campaign is also planning to air an abortion-focused ad during one of the commercial breaks in the debate, a campaign official told CNN.

The push comes as the campaign is eager to draw a sharp contrast with Trump over reproductive rights on the debate stage.

“In a medical emergency, seconds matter. When you’re the only person in the emergency room at 2 a.m. in the morning, and someone comes in hemorrhaging, and they are pregnant, you’re responsible,” Miller says in the ad. “Two years ago, Trump overturned Roe v. Wade. Because of the abortion bans across the country, women’s lives are at risk. Physicians could be tried with a felony for saving that woman’s life too early. The penalties are so severe; felony, imprisonment, loss of license, those are terrifying things.”

She adds, “This election is the most important election of my generation and my daughter’s generation. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will protect our fundamental rights, putting health care decisions back in the hands of women and their doctors.”

President Joe Biden speaks about reproductive rights during a campaign stop on April 23, in Tampa, Florida.

President Joe Biden said in a statement Thursday that the Supreme Court decision in Idaho’s abortion case “ensures that women in Idaho can access the emergency medical care they need” – but he also placed blame squarely on Republicans for their “extreme and dangerous” anti-abortion agenda.

Abortion remains a key issue in the presidential race – and one that is likely to come up in Thursday’s CNN presidential debate between Biden and his rival, former President Donald Trump, that will happen just hours after the Supreme Court released its decision.

An empty stage is seen ahead of CNN’s presidential debate in Atlanta.

The Supreme Court’s decision comes hours before President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are set to face off at CNN’s presidential debate in Atlanta. Biden’s advisers have signaled abortion rights will be a key contrast point for Biden heading into the showdown.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone. While it allowed a key abortion medication on the market for women, the Biden campaign also used the moment to warn voters that reproductive rights remain under threat from “MAGA attacks” in the country.

Democrats believe abortion rights can prove galvanizing for voters in November, and they have worked relentlessly to tie new restrictions on the procedure to Trump, accusing him of fomenting “cruelty and chaos” following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Trump has taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pointing to the three conservative justices he appointed to the court who voted to strip away the nationwide right to abortion.

That has opened the door for Biden to warn voters of what type of justices Trump could potentially appoint if he were to regain the White House in November.

“The next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees,” Biden told donors earlier this month at a fundraiser in Los Angeles, calling the potential of additional Trump appointees “one of the scariest parts” of a second Trump term.

Polling has shown that abortion is still a politically potent issue for Democrats and that most Americans prefer at least some access to the procedure.

The Supreme Court’s decision comes days after the Biden-Harris campaign marked the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and further elevates an issue Democrats have been wanting to put front and center in the 2024 campaign.

A series of elections in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobb’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade — including the 2022 midterms — have consistently resulted in high turnout and success for Democrats.

The campaign has relied, in part, on first-person testimony from women who have been denied abortions or have otherwise been impacted by state abortion bans that took effect after the court ruling in 2022.

The Biden campaign has stuck to a consistent playbook when talking about Trump and abortion policy. It has pointed to the times the former president took credit for appointing three of the judges who overturned Roe, linked every state-level policy shift to Trump and argued that national Republicans ultimately want to push a federal ban.

The White House had been bracing for a ruling on whether federal law to provide emergency care can overrides state abortion bans. The Biden administration sees the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act – known colloquially as EMTALA – as “the last tool” to provide abortion care in states where bans have been put in place, a senior administration official told CNN ahead of the ruling.

“It would be devastating,” the official tells CNN of a potential move to undercut EMTALA.

Jennifer Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council, has led the White House’s effort to coordinate policy, outreach, and messaging with the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. In advance of the ruling, HHS launched a website to make it easier for patients to file complaints of EMTALA violations and investigated hospitals that received complaints.

The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law a day after the opinion was inadvertently posted on the court’s website in an astonishing departure from its highly controlled protocols. At issue in the case was a state law that banned abortions except for the life of the pregnant woman.

Read the decision:

The Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, on June 26.

As it juggles a bevy of high-profile decisions this term, the Supreme Court won’t make its unofficial deadline to finish it work by the end of June. 

By tradition, Chief Justice John Roberts announces the last day of the term one day in advance. Because he didn’t do that on Thursday, it means Friday won’t be the last day of the court’s work and opinions will continue to be issued next week.  

The court will next issue opinions on Friday at 10 a.m. ET.  

The court last went into the first full week of July during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.   

The decision formally released Thursday sweeps abortion off the Supreme Court’s docket in the middle of a highly contested presidential election, even though the issue was almost certain to return to the justices.

Earlier this month, the court dispensed with another abortion case, an appeal challenging expanded access to the abortion pill mifepristone. There, a unanimous court held that the anti-abortion doctors and groups who sued did not have standing.  

President Joe Biden has highlighted how the Supreme Court — with three of former President Donald Trump’s nominees — overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, eliminating a constitutional right to obtain an abortion.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson attends the State of the Union address in 2023.

The unsigned opinion released Thursday drew a flurry of concurrences from conservative and liberal justices, forming an unusual alliance to dismiss the case and temporarily block enforcement of Idaho’s strict ban. Though the decision was technically a loss for Idaho, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed in a partial dissent that the potential impact is likely to be short-lived.  

People gather during a protest in support of reproductive rights and emergency abortion care outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, on April 24.

The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law a day after the opinion was inadvertently posted on the court’s website in an astonishing departure from the court’s highly controlled protocols. 

At issue in the case was a state law that banned abortions except for the life of the pregnant woman. The Biden administration argued that a federal law required hospitals to also provide abortions in cases where the health of a pregnant woman is at stake.   

The Supreme Court has issued a decision on whether Idaho’s abortion ban can be enforced in medical emergencies.

CNN reporters are going through the opinion now and will provide the latest updates.

This comes after the Supreme Court appeared poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, according to reporting from Bloomberg News, citing a document that was briefly inadvertently posted on the court’s website in an astonishing breach of protocol.

The copy of the document inadvertently posted on the Supreme Court court’s website and reviewed by Bloomberg showed the justices voting 6-3 to allow the emergency abortions to take place in Idaho on a temporary basis while the case continues.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say that she wouldn’t have dismissed the case, according to the document Bloomberg reviewed. “Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho,” Jackson wrote. “It is delay.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday officially announced two opinions and had not planned to issue or post any others.

The court will next release opinions Thursday at 10 a.m. ET.

Idaho’s abortion law had an immediate effect on hospitals in the state. On January 5, the Supreme Court lifted an injunction so Idaho no longer had EMTALA protections for pregnancy complications.

Physicians leaving Idaho: The law hasn’t just hurt patient care, said Molly Meegan, chief legal officer for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a professional organization that represents the majority of practitioners in the United States.

Sending patients out of state: In April, St. Luke’s, the state’s largest provider of emergency services, said it had had to send six pregnant patients from its emergency department out of state via air transport to protect their health. The year before, when the injunction was in effect, the hospital had to do this only once, according to details in Wednesday’s Supreme Court document.

Dr. Kara Cadwallader, a doctor who works in Idaho and is a member of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare, said her hospital had to send a pregnant person out of state for care last week even though they typically could have treated her. She is “very excited” about Wednesday’s ruling, even if it is a “small step.”

“Beyond all the political reasons, it’s incredibly important for pregnant patients here in Idaho, who now will be able to access emergency care appropriately,” Cadwallader said.

Different approach to prenatal conversations: Dr. Julie Lyons, a family medicine physician at St. Luke’s, told CNN earlier this year that the Idaho abortion law is so restrictive that she makes sure to talk to patients – even at their first prenatal appointment – about what they will need to do if they have an emergency.

“We, more than ever, are having that discussion – like, if you need to go out of state, you need to check with your insurance, you need to make sure you buy life flight insurance,” Lyons said in February.

Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 17.

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.

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.”

In 2021, the Biden administration released the Reinforcement of EMTALA Obligation, which says a doctor’s duty to provide stabilizing treatment “preempts any directly conflicting state law or mandated that might otherwise prohibit or prevent such treatment,” although it did not specify whether an abortion has to be provided.

In July 2022, the Biden administration’s guidance clarified that EMTALA includes the need to perform stabilization abortion care if it is medically necessary to treat an emergency medical condition.

A Supreme Court document like the one accidentally posted Wednesday means a hospital must provide an abortion if it’s medically indicated in an emergency situation even in states that have abortion bans or restrictions that don’t provide an exception to protect the health of the mother – at least as the case makes it way through the courts.

Anti-abortion groups were skeptical about the finality of the document briefly published on the Supreme Court’s website Thursday and criticized the Biden administration’s argument that the Emergency Medical Treatment Labor Act (EMTALA) should be used to protect abortion access in emergency situations.

Danie criticized the Biden administration’s EMTALA argument pointing out that state laws that restrict abortion care still allow the procedure in life-or-death cases.

She also emphasized that “the final opinion has not been released.”

Six Supreme Court justices aligned to temporarily allow emergency room abortions in Idaho, according to the inadvertently posted opinion – a majority that included both conservatives and liberals.

But they did so for slightly different reasons.

The court’s three liberals argued in a concurrence written by Justice Elena Kagan that the court erred when it allowed the state to enforce the law temporarily while the Supreme Court considered the case. The state ban, Kagan wrote, “prevents hospitals from doing” what the federal law commands. The decision “will again give Idaho women access to all the needed medical treatments that EMTALA guarantees.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a separate concurrence joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, made a slightly different point. Barrett argued that Idaho appears to be able to enforce its ban “in the vast majority of circumstances.”

Barrett’s point is that she doesn’t believe there’s a significant conflict between the Biden administration and Idaho because of changes that were made to the Idaho law as the litigation unfolded.

Pro-choice groups have been careful not to celebrate the Supreme Court decision, instead saying that the justices’ ruling would merely delay a future decision that may restrict abortion access in emergency situations.

While these pro-choice groups were relieved that abortion access may be restored in Idaho, each pointed out the possibility that the court may rule differently in the future.

Reproductive Freedom for All CEO Mini Timmaraju echoed this warning saying “This is not a victory but a delay.”

“The abortion bans that are putting people’s lives on the line in the first place will continue to remain on the books,” Timmaraju said.

“The U.S. Supreme Court had the opportunity to be clear that the federal EMTALA law protects the right to abortion in an emergency in every state … and they chose not to,” said Planned Parenthood Federation of America President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in a statement to CNN.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Although she did not publicly dissent to the per curiam opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was nevertheless highly critical of the court’s order avoiding a final decision in the abortion case.

It was particularly wrong, Jackson said, because the court had for months allowed Idaho’s strict abortion law to remain in effect.  

“It is too little, too late for the Court to take a mulligan and just tell the lower courts to carry on as if none of this has happened,” Jackson wrote.

When the Supreme Court said earlier this year that it would hear the case, it paused a lower-court order that had permitted the federal regulations to remain in effect while legal challenges played out. 

“Despite the clarity of the legal issue and the dire need for an answer from this Court, today six Justices refuse to recognize the rights that EMTALA protects. The majority opts, instead, to dismiss these cases,” Jackson wrote. “But storm clouds loom ahead.”

The liberal justice said she wanted the court to decide the case in full this term.   

Jackson’s concurrence also stressed the real-world impact of Idaho’s abortion law and what the court’s earlier order meant for women in the state, with the justice saying that for the past several months, “Idaho physicians were forced to step back and watch as their patients suffered, or arrange for their patients to be airlifted out of ldaho.”  

“As a legal matter, this Court’s stay meant that unless a doctor could actually say that the abortion was necessary to prevent a patient’s death, that doctor could no longer provide abortion care that she viewed as reasonably necessary to keep a patient from losing her uterus, going into organ failure, or avoiding any number of other serious health risks,” she wrote. 

The significance of references to the “unborn child” in the federal emergency medical care statute at the center of the Idaho abortion ban case was the subject of heated debate between liberal and far-right wings, according to the version of the ruling obtained by Bloomberg Wednesday. 

This could be a major issue if the case ever returns to the Supreme Court.

What the conservatives say: A dissent written by Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, embraced an argument put forward by Idaho and its supporters in their efforts to defend the state’s strict ban on abortion. Alito described the Emergency Medical Treatment Labor Act (EMTALA), the key federal law in the dispute, as having an “express protection of the unborn child. “  

“Far from requiring hospitals to perform abortions, EMTALA’s text unambiguously demands that Medicare-funded hospitals protect the health of both a pregnant woman and her ‘unborn child,’” Alito wrote.  

He later added that “EMTALA obligates Medicare-funded hospitals to treat, not abort, an ‘unborn child.’”  

What the liberals say:  Justice Elena Kagan, in parts of her concurrence that were joined by both Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, sought to rebut Alito’s claims. She said three of the statute’s four references to an “unborn child” have to do with how hospitals handle transfers of women in labor, and thus were not related to the types of emergency pregnancy complications at issue in this case.  

Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate were watching closely for how the court treated the “unborn child” language in the case. Anti-abortion activists argued that it showed that Congress, when it added the provisions making the reference, saw an interest in protecting unborn life. Abortion rights advocates countered that that was not Congress’ intent, and worried that the conservative Supreme Court would read fetal personhood into a federal statute for the first time ever.  

For now, it is unclear whether either interpretation is accepted by a majority of the high court.  

On opinion days, the Supreme Court traditionally begins at 10 a.m. ET and reads any opinions it will release in order in terms of seniority — from most-junior to most-senior.

Any per curiam opinions — majority decisions that are unsigned — would be at the end.

They are announced from the bench and simultaneously handed out to reporters in the press room in print and posted online. The difference today was that the opinion was mistakenly posted online and it wasn’t announced from the bench and printed copies were not present.

Here’s the full comment from the court’s spokesperson:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday officially announced two opinions and had not planned to issue or post any others.

The court will next release opinions Thursday at 10 a.m. ET.

In some ways the court’s decision would reflect the trouble some justices had with the case during oral arguments in April. An intervening decision from Idaho state’s Supreme Court had left some of the justices seeking additional clarity on when, precisely, the state’s ban might be in conflict with the federal law.

Since the court granted the case, Barrett added, “the parties’ litigating positions have rendered the scope of the dispute unclear, at best.”

Barrett wrote that state officials represented that its exceptions to the ban “is broader than the United States fears” and the federal government, she said, argued that the exception “narrower than Idaho fears.”

Barrett noted that the Biden administration, during oral arguments, made clear that it would not argue that mental health concerns should be considered an exception to Idaho’s ban. Barrett described that as a “dramatic narrowing of the dispute.”

Given that, she wrote, Idaho’s ability to enforce its law “remains almost entirely intact.”

There are several circumstances in which an abortion may be the only option to protect the health and life of the pregnant person, according to doctors, who add this is true “without question.”

The question of when an abortion is medically indicated is “really broad and extends across medical specialties,” according to the American Medical Association.

Dangerous conditions can include when the amniotic sac ruptures early, presenting a major risk for infection, sepsis or placental abruption when the placenta separates from the inner wall of the uterus, which can result in uncontrollable bleeding and may lead to cardiac arrest, kidney failure or miscarriage.

Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said the ruling would be a major, but not permanent, win for the Biden White House, which challenged the Idaho law.

That’s because the underlying lawsuit at the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals would be allowed to continue and perhaps wind up back at the Supreme Court.

“When the justices took this case, they leapfrogged over the federal court of appeals, and froze the district court injunction against Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. This reporting suggests that the Court is going to say that it shouldn’t have acted so rashly, and will let the litigation proceed in the normal course,” he added.

“For now, that means the injunction allowing emergency abortions in Idaho goes back into effect, while Idaho’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit continues.”

More Idahoans are relying on abortion providers in neighboring states since the state’s ban went into effect.

Five of the six states bordering Idaho saw increases in the share of patients traveling from out of state to receive abortions from 2020 to 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.

Here’s a snapshot:

Many states surrounding those with full abortion bans experienced a similar trend. For example, nearly three-fourths of abortion patients in New Mexico — neighbor to Texas and Oklahoma, which both have bans in place — traveled in from other states in 2023.

More than 171,000 people crossed state lines to get an abortion in 2023, according to Guttmacher. That’s more than twice the number of out-of-state patients recorded three years prior. South Carolina and New Mexico saw the biggest spikes in the share of out-of-state patients, with 37 and 33 percentage point jumps, respectively.

The release of the opinion marks the second time in two years that a major decision dealing with an abortion case has been prematurely released by the court.

Two years ago, Politico obtained a draft of the high court’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade – a document that was substantially the same as the final opinion the court released weeks later.

The copy of the document inadvertently posted on the Supreme Court court’s website and reviewed by Bloomberg showed the justices voting 6-3 to allow the emergency abortions to take place in Idaho on a temporary basis while the case continues.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say that she wouldn’t have dismissed the case, according to the document Bloomberg reviewed. “Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho,” Jackson wrote. “It is delay.”

Healthcare workers hold signs outside of the Supreme Court before the court's oral arguments in Idaho v. United States in Washington, DC, on April 24.

The Supreme Court appears poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, according to a document that was erroneously posted on the court’s website briefly Wednesday according to Bloomberg News. 

“When the justices took this case, they leapfrogged over the federal court of appeals, and froze the district court injunction against Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. This reporting suggests that the court is going to say that it shouldn’t have acted so rashly and will let the litigation proceed in the normal course. For now, that means the injunction allowing emergency abortions in Idaho goes back into effect, while Idaho’s appeal to the 9th Circuit continues,” Vladeck explained.  

Why this matters: The court’s move, as reported by Bloomberg, also has the effect of defusing what could have been a major political bomb – on an issue Democrats are eager to have front and center – in an election year. As the Supreme Court approached the end of its term, abortion rights advocates were making preparations to use a ruling in Idaho’s favor to mobilize voters. The White House was also bracing for a ruling that rejected the Justice Department lawsuit, CNN previously reported. 

An abortion rights advocate participates in a protest outside of the US Supreme Court Building on June 24 in Washington, DC. 

The Supreme Court appears poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, according to a document that was erroneously posted on the court’s website briefly Wednesday according to Bloomberg News. 

The opinion posted on the court’s website showed that a majority of the court agreed to dismiss the appeal, according to Bloomberg, which reported that it reviewed a copy of the opinion.

CNN has not independently reviewed the opinion.   

A Supreme Court spokesperson confirmed that a “document” was “inadvertently and briefly uploaded” to the court’s website. Supreme Court spokesperson Patricia McCabe stressed that the “opinion” in the case “has not been released” and would be “issued in due course.”

Remember: At issue is Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which provides an exception for the life of the pregnant woman. The Biden administration argued that a federal law also required hospitals to perform abortions in cases where the health of the pregnant woman is at stake. 

Both the Department of Justice and the White House are declining to comment on Bloomberg’s story and the mistakenly posted document until the Supreme Court’s official opinion is released.