‘Pitting patients against physicians’: doctors brace for US supreme court verdict on emergency abortions

As states ban abortions, a 1968 federal law requires hospitals that receive Medicaid dollars to stabilize patients in a medical emergency, creating a catch-22 for care providers

Dr Lauren Miller used to cry every day on her way to work.

A fetal maternal medicine specialist in Idaho, Miller despaired over the possibility she might be forced to tell patients she could not help them. Idaho has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation, which means Miller could only perform abortions to save a woman's life - and many patients, even those facing medical emergencies with potentially deadly consequences, were not yet sick enough to qualify.