What: Supreme Court justices seemed split mainly along ideological lines during oral arguments over a federal requirement that hospitals provide emergency care to stabilize a patient, including abortions when necessary.

Why it matters: If the court rules that states can override this federal law, it means more women will suffer or die unnecessarily. Justice Samuel Alito today said those arguments were hypothetical, but the government’s main lawyer put that notion to rest: “Today, doctors in Idaho and the women in Idaho are in an impossible position. If a woman comes to an emergency room facing a grave threat to her health, but she isn’t yet facing death, doctors either have to delay treatment and allow her condition to materially deteriorate or they’re airlifting her out of the state so she can get the emergency care that she needs.”

Source: New York Times