Idaho Women Are Temporarily Safer—But This Is Not a Victory for Abortion Rights

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued the official ruling in its final major abortion case of 2024, dismissing the consolidated cases of Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States. The Court’s dismissal temporarily upholds a lower court ruling that sided with the Biden administration in requiring that hospitals perform life and health-saving abortions where needed.

This is good news for obvious reasons—chief among them that “women don’t deserve to die or become disabled because they got pregnant in an anti-abortion state” really should not be up for debate. With this decision, Idaho individuals still won’t have basic abortion rights, but they will at least have the same rights as everyone else to be medically stabilized if they find themselves pregnant and in an emergency medical situation.

But this Court wouldn’t answer a vital question: Do pregnant women deserve the same medical treatment to save their lives and preserve their health as everyone else? It may not be the worst-case scenario, but it’s also not any sort of win.