Supreme Court To Let Idaho Kill Pregnant People Until They Get Around To Dealing With It

Eh, why the rush?

Photo by Mat Napo on Unsplash

Back in August, the United States District Court for the District of Idaho issued an injunction stopping the state’s entirely sadistic abortion law that bars hospitals from performing emergency abortions in most situations. This was a good decision. A sane decision. It obviously would have been better had the court overruled the law entirely, but the case was instead sent to the Supreme Court.

And on Friday, our Supreme Court decided to lift that injunction and allow the state to ramp up its maternal mortality rate until they are able to officially rule on the case — likely by the end of summer.

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At issue is whether or not the Biden administration can require hospitals in states with especially sadistic abortion regulations to adhere to the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) when the two are in conflict.

EMTALA requires hospitals that have dedicated emergency departments and accept money from the government in the form of Medicare to provide necessary stabilizing treatment to anyone who comes through their doors in a medical emergency, regardless of their ability to pay. This includes performing emergency abortions in the event that the life or health of the mother is in jeopardy.

This conflicts with Idaho’s policy of “not giving a fuck.” More specifically, the law only allows for emergency abortions when the patient’s life is at risk — not just their health. This requires doctors to wait until the situation gets more dangerous and more dire before giving people the treatment they need … which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want doctors to do in an emergency medical situation. Chances of survival are a hell of lot higher when we are talking about health than when we are talking about life and death.

To understand what the hell is going on here, we must first understand that there are people who view a mother dying in childbirth as a beautiful thing, a beautiful sacrifice that they would like to believe their own mother would have made for them. Saving the life of the mother, who has already had her opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as her personal savior, comes second to saving a fetus before they have that chance and are, presumably, just sent to hell (since limbo isn’t a thing anymore). When you see women primarily as baby-making vessels, not dying in childbirth is just shirking their responsibilities. God put that baby there and if he didn’t want a woman to die giving birth to it, he wouldn’t have created whatever condition caused that to happen.

It is not that they are overlooking the danger here — it’s that they know it exists and, at least in the hypothetical arena where it’s never going to directly affect them, they do not care. Women have already died due to these abortion laws, and they do not care.

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From now until the Supreme Court gets around to ruling on this case — they’re hearing it starting in April but it could take months before the actual ruling is issued — the life of every pregnant person in Idaho is in danger. Any one of them could have a sudden medical issue, could suffer an accident, could have something happen that lands them in a hospital with a doctor who has to wait and wait and wait until they are on the very precipice of death before giving them the treatment they need.

It’s not going to end well.