Idaho Democratic Leader: Stomach ‘Sick’ After Supreme Court Abortion Case

The minority leader of the Idaho state Senate said the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on her state’s abortion ban makes her “uneasy” as conservative justices heard arguments Wednesday in the latest abortion battle before the high court.

The Court heard oral arguments regarding the Biden administration’s mandate that hospitals receiving Medicare funding provide an abortion if it is necessary to stabilize the health of an emergency room patient.

Senator Melissa Wintrow, the Democratic leader in the Idaho state Senate, said she had little faith that the Supreme Court would ultimately uphold the Department of Justice (DOJ) mandate.

“The Supreme Court has let me down before,” Wintrow told The Hill outside the Supreme Court. “My stomach is sick to my stomach about what’s going to happen.”

The emergency care case is the latest example of abortion’s return to the Supreme Court after the issue was ostensibly returned to the states in the landmark decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Last month, the justices heard arguments in a case that could see sweeping changes to access to medical abortion. But while the majority of justices appeared to side with the Justice Department in this case, the conservative majority appeared more sympathetic to Idaho on Wednesday.

Idaho’s Defense of Life Act is one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, offering exceptions only to save a patient’s life.

The federal law EMTALA, or Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, requires federally funded hospitals to provide stabilizing care to emergency room patients, even if they cannot pay.

The Biden administration argues that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide an abortion if it is necessary not only to save a life but to prevent seriously negative health outcomes, regardless of state law.

Wintrow said her state’s resistance to the mandate hurts a small, vulnerable group of people.

“We’re talking about fewer emergencies,” Wintrow said. “The state of Idaho is using tax dollars to fight a federal law that protects you in a crisis.”

Idaho House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel (D), who joined Wintrow on the courthouse steps, said her Republican colleagues should have viewed the DOJ intervention as “a gift,” an opportunity to move away from the law. “incredibly extreme” state law passed years before Roe v. Wade. Wade was overruled.

“[Idaho Republicans] I should have just said ‘thanks, Honor, you’re right. We actually didn’t want to kill women who were in medical emergencies,’” Rubel said.

Idaho Democratic leaders said Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, whose office defends the state law, is “out of bounds” and that the ban is scaring high-risk parental care workers in the state.

“We lost 55 percent of our high-risk maternity specialists [in Idaho]. Now there are parts of the state where you have to travel 170 miles just to get to an OB/GYN,” Rubel said.

Labrador, who greeted supporters on the steps after oral arguments, called the Democratic leaders’ statements “an exaggeration.”

“The Supreme Court has made it very clear that [the threshold for legal abortion] it didn’t have to be imminent death, it’s a subjective standard,” said Labrador.

“I think what is shameful is that some members of the medical community and some lawyers are trying to confuse the public and scaring pregnant women and scaring doctors.”

Labrador also said the loss of high-risk maternity care workers in Idaho is not state-specific, and that neighboring states like Oregon, a blue state, are facing the same issues.

Labrador declined to comment on how the justices received Idaho’s arguments, saying he couldn’t “read the tea leaves.”

However, he indicated that he believed the conservative court would side with his state.

“It is important for the Court to protect the sovereignty of the state of Idaho, and after Dobbs, they have clearly indicated that it is up to the states to determine the extent of abortion coverage in most states,” he told The Hill.