The Supreme Court may have inadvertently telegraphed the outcome of a key abortion case Wednesday, in the clash between Idaho’s near-total ban and a federal law requiring emergency care. Bloomberg Law reported that it obtained a copy of the document that the court said was accidentally posted on its website and has since been removed. To be clear, the court hasn’t officially issued a ruling yet, so there is only so much that we can read into it at the moment.
The US Supreme Court is poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, according to a copy of the opinion that was briefly posted on the court’s website. The decision would reinstate a lower court order that had ensured hospitals in the state could perform emergency abortions to protect the health of the mother. The briefly posted version indicated the majority will dismiss an appeal by Idaho without resolving the core issues in the case.
A court spokesperson said that the opinion has not been released, that it was posted inadvertently and briefly uploaded to the court’s website, and that it will be issued in due course.
According to the document posted by Bloomberg Law, the court would vote 6-3 with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissenting. The document contains separate writings from the justices, including from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who writes that the outcome “is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay” and that “while this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”
Again, the court has not actually issued its opinion, and we don’t know if the posted document was the final ruling. So we don’t know whether this will, in fact, be the outcome or how the decision could look differently, if at all, from the prematurely posted document. But if this is the outcome, while it doesn’t rule on the merits in Idaho’s favor, Jackson’s separate writing shows how it wouldn’t be a win for abortion rights, either.
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