A US federal law requires hospitals to provide abortions and other emergency medical care when necessary to prevent serious health consequences for all patients, including pregnant women. It seems, according to the US state of Idaho, that the US Supreme Court could “neutralize” that law. This is a lengthy and complicated article that makes you feel glad you will never have to sit in a court of law and listen to all sides endlessly expounding why they believe something that is wrong is right. The bottom line in the case, however, is how far must you go to save the life of a woman with a complicated pregnancy that may kill her if it is not terminated. And even, perhaps, to what extent you would put the life of the fetus, not the woman, first, if that might make a difference. The debate is, at its core, about whether and when federal law overrides state law in the US, a complexity that was built into state and federal law from 1776 onwards, so as to ensure lawyers and judges and members of federal and state legislatures could spend their days endlessly debating and voting on this issue for every conceivable point of law.
SOURCE: Ian Millhiers, Vox, 9 April 2024 ; PHOTO at 2023 protest, by Sarah A Miller, Idaho Statesman, 12 April 2024