The Supreme Court docket handed down two vital orders on Friday night. The first proclaims that the Court docket will hear a case asking whether or not former President Donald Trump is disqualified from operating for president. The Court docket’s resolution to listen to this case was broadly anticipated, and the largest information on this order is that the Court docket plans to listen to the case on an expedited foundation, with oral arguments going down on February 8.

The second order is extra stunning and probably virtually as consequential: The Court docket briefly blocked a decrease courtroom’s resolution holding that sufferers who require an abortion to avoid wasting their life or stop catastrophic well being penalties are entitled to such an abortion beneath federal legislation.

Within the second order, the Court docket additionally agreed to listen to a pair of instances asking whether or not federal legislation requires hospitals to carry out medically mandatory abortions. These two instances are known as Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States.

Each the Moyle and Idaho instances ought to be slam dunks in favor of abortion rights. A federal legislation generally known as the Emergency Medical Therapy and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals that obtain Medicare funds — which is almost all hospitals as a result of Medicare pays for well being care for the aged — to offer “such remedy as could also be required to stabilize the medical situation” of “any particular person” who arrives on the hospital’s ER with an “emergency medical situation.” (In restricted circumstances, the hospital might switch the affected person to a distinct facility that can present this stabilizing remedy, however the affected person should obtain the remedy.)

EMTALA doesn’t particularly point out abortions, however the legislation is written expansively and applies a blanket rule. When a affected person arrives at an emergency room with a medical emergency, the hospital should stabilize that affected person. That implies that, if an abortion is the medically applicable remedy, the affected person should obtain an abortion.

This rule is triggered, furthermore, not solely when a affected person has a life-threatening situation, but in addition when a affected person has a situation that locations their well being “in severe jeopardy,” that threatens “severe impairment to bodily capabilities,” or “severe dysfunction of any bodily organ or half.” So a affected person should be supplied abortion care if an abortion will save their life, but in addition in the event that they want an abortion to stop severe harm to their uterus or another severe medical complication.

The Court docket’s resolution to listen to the Idaho and Moyle instances is just not significantly stunning as a result of the far-right United States Court docket of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit not too long ago handed down a call holding that EMTALA doesn’t apply to abortions in any respect. That call is riddled with errors; amongst different issues, the Fifth Circuit didn’t even have the lawful authority to resolve this case. However the Supreme Court docket usually takes up authorized questions that break up decrease courts, and the Fifth Circuit’s resolution implies that decrease courts are divided on whether or not EMTALA means what it says.

Nonetheless, the Court docket’s resolution to additionally droop a decrease courtroom’s order holding that EMTALA does imply what it says and that it preempts an Idaho legislation that prohibits all abortions besides when “mandatory to stop the demise of the pregnant lady” is sort of sudden. The Court docket sat on these two instances for greater than a month earlier than blocking the decrease courtroom’s resolution. And, once more, the EMTALA statute is crystal clear that sufferers experiencing a medical emergency should obtain “such remedy as could also be required to stabilize the medical situation” — nothing in EMTALA means that this rule doesn’t apply if the suitable remedy is an abortion.

However this is identical Court docket that overruled Roe v. Wade, and 5 of the Court docket’s Republican appointees have proven a unprecedented willingness to bend the legislation to profit anti-abortion litigants — even ruling that the state of Texas might immunize itself from federal litigation difficult its anti-abortion legal guidelines through the use of bounty hunters to implement these legal guidelines.

So, whereas the Court docket’s order within the Idaho and Moyle instances isn’t a positive signal that these instances will finish disastrously for girls who will die in the event that they don’t obtain an abortion, it’s nonetheless a horrible signal of what the long run might deliver for these sufferers. And, if nothing else, the Court docket’s resolution to droop the decrease courtroom’s resolution holding that EMTALA applies to hospitals in Idaho endangers pregnant sufferers in that state — no less than till the Court docket points its remaining resolution in these instances.