The other abortion-related case on the Court’s lineup, Moyle v. United States, centered on the conflict between Idaho state law, which prohibits abortion except to avert the death of the pregnant person, and the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act , which requires that hospitals receiving Medicaid funding provide stabilizing emergency care to any patient who is at the broader risk of “serious impairment to bodily functions.
” Opining for the minority, Samuel Alito held that federal law does not require abortion care under any circumstances; his position leaned heavily on the fact that EMTALA’s text includes the phrase “unborn child.” Alito fixated on this phrase in his dissent, just as he and Neil Gorsuch did during oral arguments; he sees it as a gotcha, or a Freudian slip, and his perseveration hints strongly at Alito’s sympathies toward fetal personhood.