What the Supreme Court emergency abortion case means for Florida

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a case questioning whether and when emergency abortions are required in states with abortion restrictions.

The decision means that women in Idaho, where the case originated, can access emergency abortions for now. Those may be in cases where women present to the hospital with severe conditions, but where their life isn’t at immediate risk.

But the court didn’t weigh in on whether the state’s abortion restrictions conflict with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires that hospitals stabilize patients with emergency conditions.

Here’s what to know about what the Supreme Court’s move does and does not mean for Florida.

Florida’s law is different than Idaho’s

Florida’s abortion restrictions aren’t an exact mirror of Idaho’s.

Idaho’s law bans nearly all abortions — even those earlier than six weeks of pregnancy — and allows emergency abortions only if the life of the mother is at risk.

Florida bans most abortions after six weeks. Florida’s exceptions allow abortions later for health reasons if necessary to save a woman’s life or to “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”

That exception requires two doctors to sign off unless it’s an emergency.

Opponents of Florida’s abortion restrictions point to examples of women who have been turned away from emergency care even with the health exceptions in place, like Anya Cook, a South Florida woman who was denied an abortion after her water broke at 16 weeks pregnant. Cook ended up in intensive care.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought up Cook’s case during oral arguments.

Florida doctors won’t get any more answers for now

Because the court didn’t rule on the merits of the case, the justices didn’t provide clarity for doctors in Florida and elsewhere about when emergency abortions are OK. Though some justices wrote opinions providing their thoughts on the proper course of action, those aren’t binding.

Sheela Ranganathan, an associate with the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute, said that had the court sided with the federal government, it would have served as an extra layer of protection for doctors who want to provide treatment without fearing potentially criminal repercussions.

“By dismissing the case, the Supreme Court is evading the opportunity to provide any clarity” about whether the federal government’s requirements preempt state abortion bans like Florida’s, Ranganathan said in an email.

Ranganathan said Florida’s law and agency rules are not clear about “what conditions can be read into the health exception, given that others are specifically exempted from the abortion ban.”

Mary Ziegler, a reproductive law expert at the University of California, Davis, said that the court may or may not come back later with a ruling on the case itself.

Florida’s emergency rules for emergency abortions

When Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect, the state Agency for Health Care Administration set an emergency rule clarifying that treatment of certain conditions isn’t considered an abortion. In the rules, the agency said President Joe Biden administration’s, the media and advocacy groups were perpetuating a “deeply dishonest scare campaign.”

The rule says that treatment of ectopic pregnancies and trophoblastic tumors (sometimes known as molar pregnancy) are not abortions and don’t need to be reported as abortions. It also says that when a doctor induces the birth of a fetus to treat a premature membrane rupture, if the fetus does not survive it is not an abortion.

Some doctors have said the conditions listed in the rules aren’t comprehensive.