The U.S. Supreme Court is once again considering an abortion-related case on Wednesday, this time to examine an ultra-restrictive Idaho state law that the Biden administration accuses of violating federal law on medical emergencies.
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The case is being closely followed because it could have an impact on hospitals across the country. Abortion is also one of the themes at the heart of the campaign for the presidential election on November 5.
It is this same Supreme Court dominated by conservatives which shattered, in June 2022, the federal guarantee of the right to abortion, breaking several decades of jurisprudence.
Since then, many states have severely restricted or even banned voluntary terminations of pregnancies (abortions), creating a new landscape for reproductive rights in the United States and provoking a multitude of legal challenges.
Idaho, a rural state in the northwest, is one of the most severe regions in this area: abortion is prohibited there, with rare exceptions.
The administration of Democratic President Joe Biden has asked the courts to block the legislation, arguing that it violates a federal law on medical emergencies because it does not provide an exception in the event of a “serious danger to the health” of pregnant women and authorizes prosecutions against doctors.
Any decision by the Supreme Court “will be a reflection of who we are as a society,” said Destiny Lopez, an official at the Guttmacher Institute, a leading research center that defends women’s right to abortion.
“Do we agree to require pregnant women facing serious complications to suffer life-threatening consequences rather than granting them access to abortion?,” she added.
A federal judge in Boise, the capital of Idaho, issued a preliminary injunction in August 2022 that partially suspended that state’s law, saying it put doctors in a delicate position.
But in January, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to temporarily reinstate it while it considers an appeal against the measure.
On Wednesday, in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, around a hundred pro-abortion demonstrators brandished signs proclaiming “Abortion saves lives”.
Around ten anti-abortion activists faced them.
