The US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday to permit, for now, abortions to be performed in Idaho when pregnant women are facing medical emergencies, as the justices dispensed with the contentious issue without actually deciding the case on its merits.
The 6-3 ruling effectively reinstated a lower court’s decision that Idaho’s Republican-backed near-total abortion ban must yield to a 1986 US law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) when the two statutes conflict.
A version of the ruling was inadvertently posted to the court’s website on Wednesday in the second instance in the past two years of the disclosure of a major abortion decision before its formal issuance.
President Joe Biden’s administration had sued Idaho, arguing that EMTALA takes precedence over state law. EMTALA ensures that patients can receive emergency care at hospitals that receive funding under the federal Medicare program. Idaho is among six states with abortion bans that offer no exceptions to protect the health of pregnant women.
The court’s decision, an unsigned, one-line order, lifted a block, or stay, that the justices had placed on the lower court’s ruling in January. But the Supreme Court did not resolve the underlying legal dispute, opting instead to dismiss the case as “improvidently granted.”
Biden, seeking re-election this year, has sought to make abortion rights a centerpiece of his campaign, as Democrats try to use the issue to political advantage against Republicans in races across the country.
Donald Trump is the Republican candidate challenging Biden in the November 5 US election.
Trump, as president, appointed three of the six justices who were in the majority in the 2022 abortion ruling and he has been on the defensive on the abortion issue during this year’s campaign.
Trump has said in states with abortion bans he backs exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother and also that he supports the availability of in-vitro fertilization.
Source: BBC
In other news – Former Cameroon international Landry Nguemo has died
Landry Nguemo, the 38-year-old former Cameroon international, died in a traffic accident on Thursday, the Cameroon Football Federation (Fecafoot) said on its Facebook page.
“Fecafoot has just learned the news of the death of the former Indomitable Lion, Landry Nguemo, as a result of a traffic accident,” it posted. Read more
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