Things have gotten horribly crowded here in America’s virtual ERs.

As always, doctors in white coats and nurses in light blue scrubs are urgently applying their expertise to help – sometimes even save – patients, who include desperate pregnant women who arrived at their hospital emergency rooms suffering life and death emergencies.

But in more than a dozen states that have recently adopted near-total bans on abortions, ER doctors and nurses have been virtually bumping up against jurists in black robes – plus state government officials and enforcers. And behind them you’ll always see the state’s anti-abortion politicians.

None of them have any known medical experience. But that hasn’t stopped them from virtually looking over their shoulders and telling the medical professionals what they must do and dare not do – under penalty of losing their medical licenses and even going to jail. It has been happening increasingly ever since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Rewind, replay and rethink the tragedies that we have read and heard about in recent years. It is a crisis that cannot be ignored. In Texas, a woman who was nine months pregnant went to an emergency room. Her husband asked for help because she was about to deliver. But a front desk staff member refused to admit her. She went to the ER lobby’s restroom – and miscarried while her husband frantically called 911 for help.

Often, a pregnant woman is rushed to an emergency room in distress – and a doctor concludes the fetus is no longer viable. But her state’s law now bans abortions except to save the life of the mother. And her life isn’t at stake – yet. But a doctor knows an abortion is the only way she can later give birth to a child.

In short: The pro-life position has evolved into firmly denying the woman the ability to ever again bring a new life into this world.

The many instances reveal a pattern of states refusing to provide proper and compassionate care for pregnant women in crisis – as required by the federal government’s 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. In govspeak, that’s EMTALA. The federal law requires that hospitals that receive federal funding (such as Medicare) stabilize all patients who arrive at the emergency room in a dire situation. Even if they have no health insurance. And even if the requisite stabilizing procedure might be illegal in that state.

On Wednesday, that crush of medical-versus-legal conflict was put on display for all to hear (via livestreamed audio) if not see, live from the august chambers of the Supreme Court. The case at hand centered on Idaho’s near-total ban on abortions. President Joe Biden’s administration sued Idaho contending its ban on abortions except to save the life of the woman violated the federal EMTALA stabilization provision.

The oral argument proved to be far more interesting than you might expect. The Court’s three traditional progressives were not alone in voicing concerns about how Idaho’s law was being enforced. Two conservatives – Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett – joined the three progressives in raising concerns.

Although they have sided with the conservatives, those three all expressed significant concerns. Idaho’s acting solicitor general, Joshua Turner, said Idaho’s law allows doctors to exercise their judgment on whether an abortion is necessary.

“What happens if a dispute arises with respect to whether or not the doctor was within the confines of Idaho law or wasn’t?” Roberts asked. “Exactly how is that evaluated?” Idaho’s attorney said a medical board evaluates that and it is up to each prosecutor to decide whether to act against a doctor.

Barrett questioned what would happen if a local prosecutor didn’t agree with the decision of a doctor that abortion was necessary because of a woman’s health – even though her life was not in jeopardy.

“It is very case by case,” Turner responded. To which Barrett said: “I’m kind of shocked, actually, because I thought your own expert had said (in a written submission) …. That these kinds of cases were covered – and now you’re saying they’re not?”

The more accurate response to the concerns raised by Roberts and Barrett seemed to be summed up by the federal Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar:

“In Idaho, doctors have to shut their eyes to everything except death. Whereas under EMTALA, you’re supposed to be thinking about things like, ‘Is she about to lose her fertility? Is her uterus going to become incredibly scarred because of the bleeding? Is she about to undergo the possibility of kidney failure?’”

So Idaho has begun the dangerous, distressing and costly practice of helicoptering suffering pregnant women to nearby states to get the abortion they need. Their whirlybird pro-life rationale is more about saving face than saving lives.

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