On most days at the Supreme Court, the fact that there are now four female justices feels irrelevant. Great, but irrelevant. Gender doesn’t matter much when it comes to the complexities of federal security law or the availability of habeas corpus.
Wednesday wasn’t one of those days. Gender — in particular, the fact that the three liberal justices are all women — felt omnipresent at the oral argument in Moyle v. United States. This is the case, one of two abortion-related disputes at the Supreme Court this term, involving the federal law known as EMTALA, which requires hospital emergency rooms to provide “stabilizing care.” The Biden administration said this provision could require abortions for women facing serious health risks from continuing their pregnancies and filed suit against Idaho, where state law criminalizes abortion except to save the life of the mother.
