argumentative essay about abortion in philippines

Progress on Abortion Rights in the Philippines

For the first time, the philippine human rights commission recommends that abortion be decriminalized..

For the first time, the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (PCHR) has expressly supported the decriminalization of abortion in the Philippines, marking a historic moment for abortion advocacy in the country. The PCHR made the recommendation in November as part of its Priority Human Rights Legislative Agenda for the 19th Congress of the Philippines. The 19th Congress convened in July 2022 and will be completed in June 2025. 

The PCHR is a constitutionally established national human rights institution mandated to provide recommendations to the Congress for effective promotion of human rights and adherence to international human rights treaty obligations.  

“The PCHR’s call for decriminalization of abortion is truly historic and celebratory and is in line with the global trend towards liberalizing abortion,” said Jihan Jacob, Senior Legal Adviser for Asia at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “This marks the success of advocacy movements in the region, including the Center’s, that has worked for years to realize sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR).” 

“With President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. previously expressing support for certain cases of abortion and his allies gaining control of Congress, we are optimistic that positive change to the country’s abortion law is possible,” added Jacob. The President appointed the Chairperson and Commissioner of the PCHR, which made the recommendation in November. 

The Philippines has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, without any clear exceptions. Two United Nations treaty bodies have recently called on the country to advance sexual and reproductive health rights.  

The Center’s Recent Work in the Philippines

The PCHR’s position on abortion has evolved over the past two decades, from declaring abortion “immoral” to acknowledging the impact of abortion bans on health and human rights to finally recommending decriminalization. The Center’s advocacy efforts contributed to the PCHR’s shift in its position on abortion. ( See the timeline below for details. ) 

Human Rights Bodies Support Abortion Rights and Access  

The right to abortion and the right to bodily autonomy are fundamental human rights. Denying abortion via criminalization violates the fundamental rights to equality and non-discrimination; privacy; the highest attainable standard of health; and freedom from ill-treatment, harmful practices, and gender-based violence.  

The United Nations and other human rights bodies have frequently recommended for the right to abortion and its access and recognized it as an essential health service. Last year, two United Nations treaty bodies called on the Philippines to improve sexual and reproductive rights (SRHR) in the country. Also in 2022, the World Health Organization issued its 2022 Abortion Care Guideline , affirming abortion access as essential to health and human rights and calling for the removal of legal barriers to access.    

The Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network (PINSAN) , co-founded by the Center, released a statement in December calling for the decriminalization of abortion and commending the PCHR for including decriminalization in its 19th Priority Legislative Agenda.  

“With progressive legislation getting more support, now is the time to advance the campaign for access to safe abortion for women and girls in the Philippines without fear of arbitrary punishment,” PINSAN wrote. “Continually denying them of this right gravely violates their fundamental rights as people and citizens.” 

“The Center welcomes PCHR’s progressive stance on abortion which is in adherence with international human rights law principles. While we celebrate this win, we will continue to work closely with our regional partners to transform PCHR’s recommendations into law reform to make decriminalization of abortion a reality for Filipinos,” added Jacob. 

Timeline: The Philippine Commission on Human Rights’ Evolution on Abortion

• 1999: The PCHR viewed abortion as “immoral.” In its position paper on House Bill 6343 entitled “An Act Legalizing Abortion on Specific Cases” introduced by Hon. Roy Padilla Jr., the PCHR registered its opposition to the bill for being “immoral and/or contrary to the moral standards and religious conviction of the Filipino people.” Instead of referring to human rights standards and principles, the PCHR referred to the encyclical Evangelium Vitae by Pope John Paul II. 
• 2016: The PCHR’s opposition to abortion shifted to a call for the review and reexamination of the Filipino abortion laws. In its report for the National Inquiry on Reproductive Health and Rights, the PCHR referred to “the absolute ban on abortion, which has led to unsafe abortions and to stigma in the access and availability of post-abortion care” as one of the legal and policy barriers to fulfilling Filipinos’ reproductive health and rights. In compliance with the Philippines’ human rights obligations, the PCHR recommended for Congress to “review the provisions on abortion, taking into consideration the studies forwarded by the [Center for Reproductive Rights] and EnGendeRights and other women’s organizations and on how the continuing criminalization of abortion affect provision of post-abortion care.” 
• 2022: The PCHR unequivocally articulated its recommendation for the decriminalization of abortion as a priority legislation for the 19th Congress. 

Tags: United Nations , philippine congress , philippine commission on human rights , PCHR , Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network , PINSAN , Philippines abortion laws , Abortion in the Philippines , Philippine Human Rights Commission

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The spectre of unsafe abortions in the Philippines

Juan raphael m. perez.

a College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, 1000 Manila, Philippines

Gianica Reena S. Monteagudo

b Department of Family and Community Medicine, Philippine General Hospital, 1000 Manila, Philippines

Pia Juneea C. Nebrada

Ma veronica pia n. arevalo, edelina p. de la paz, frances dominique v. ho, clara rita a. padilla.

c EnGendeRights, Inc., 1105 Quezon City, Philippines

On 24 June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected the constitutional right to abortion, threatening the physical and mental health of millions of pregnant people in the U.S. However, this crisis has long been the reality for pregnant people in the Philippines, a lower-middle income country in Southeast Asia where abortion remains restricted with no explicit exception for high-risk pregnancies, fetal impairment, rape, and incest. 1 Nonetheless, 1.1 million induced abortions occur in the country annually, a number that was estimated to increase by 14.6% in 2020. 2 1000 Filipino women die each year from post-abortion complications. 3

Unsafe abortion contributes significantly to preventable maternal mortality in the country yet remains the sole option for many young, low-income, and rural women, 1 , 3 as 75% of Filipino women seeking abortions are financially unable to raise another child. Disturbingly, over 10% of women are victims of sexual violence. 3 Unsafe abortive methods include unsupervised catheter insertion, abdominal manipulation or massage, and self-induction with unapproved herbs. 3 , 4 Misoprostol, an internationally accepted abortifacient, also remains illegal and inaccessible due to restrictions on abortion. These frequently result in mortality from hemorrhage, sepsis, genital trauma, and bowel necrosis, with many survivors suffering long-term complications (e.g., poor wound healing, infertility, and incontinence). 5

Though the provision of humane post-abortion care is constitutional, Filipino women face both societal stigma and maltreatment from healthcare providers, the latter ranging from verbal abuse and religious sanctimony to outright refusal of care. 4 With over 80% of the Filipino population identifying as Roman Catholic, 6 strong religiosity may be a contributor to societal stigma. This, compounded by fear of legal prosecution, may lead women to delay seeking post-abortion care. Filipino healthcare providers themselves risk criminal prosecution, license revocation, and ostracisation from peers for participating in abortion-related activities. 7

Legal barriers further thwart safe post-abortion care. A 2016 Department of Health Administrative Order (DOH AO), drafted in consultation with reproductive health advocates, provided protections on confidentiality and redress mechanisms for abortion patients. 8 However, a 2018 DOH AO, developed without consulting health advocates, removed these guidelines explicitly maintaining patient privacy. 8

Women who continue with unintended pregnancies are exposed, willingly or unwillingly, to the effects of pregnancy itself, which range from normal physiologic (e.g., increased workload to the heart, hypercoagulable state of the blood) to life-threatening (e.g., preeclampsia, venous thromboembolism). 9 Quality prenatal care manages these risks, but remains out of reach for low-income Filipino women, especially those dwelling in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs), due to high out-of-pocket costs and concentrated healthcare resources in urban centers. 10

Religious, political, and socioeconomic forces influence the Filipino woman's reproductive freedoms beyond abortion. Unintended pregnancy remains a public health challenge in the Philippines because of limited access to contraception and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. Over half of all pregnancies are unintended and over half of these unintended pregnancies end in abortion. 11 Seventeen percent of Filipino women have an unmet need for family planning, an estimate projected to rise by 67% in 2020, due to community quarantine-related service disruptions. 2 Such unmet needs may be partly due to the deep-seated political and cultural power of the Philippine Catholic Church, ineffective widescale implementation of sexuality and contraception education, high rates of gender-based violence, stalled implementation of the Reproductive Health (RH) Law, and the delayed registration of contraceptives due to a former restraining order issued by the national Supreme Court. 1 , 3 , 4 The RH Law, passed in 2012, promises to provide modern contraceptive services, counseling, and sex education, especially for rural and poor Filipinos. 3

We advocate for the decriminalisation of abortion and ensuring access to safe abortion, which begins with halting the prosecution of patients and abortion care providers. Training obstetric and primary care providers for safe abortion care is also critical to expand access, especially in GIDAs. In the meantime, to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortions, policies addressing post-abortion care should prioritise the expansion of existing treatment options by nurses and midwives according to WHO standards and should be made in consultation with SRH advocates. Legislation should be crafted to protect the privacy of women seeking these services.

The country must address the determinants underlying unintended pregnancies through efforts to promote SRH literacy and universal access to modern contraception, while effectively addressing gender-based violence. Finally, to improve outcomes for people with unintended pregnancies, it is imperative to reduce out-of-pocket costs of prenatal care and mobilise prenatal care providers towards and within resource-limited areas. Ultimately, it is time for the Philippines to rethink its long-standing cultural condemnation of induced abortion and consider how safe abortion access can not only save lives but also defend women's health, security, and dignity.

Contributors

Conceptualisation, resources, writing (original draft), writing (review & editing) - JRMP, GRSM, PJCN, MVPNA, EPDP, FDVH, CRAP.

Declaration of interests

We declare no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

Funding: This study received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Abortion — Why Abortion Should Be Legalized

Why Abortion Should Be Legalized

• Categories: Abortion Pro Choice (Abortion) Women's Health

About this sample

Words: 1331 |

Published: Jan 28, 2021

Words: 1331 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, why abortion should be legal.

• Gipson, J. D., Hirz, A. E., & Avila, J. L. (2011). Perceptions and practices of illegal abortion among urban young adults in the Philippines: a qualitative study. Studies in family planning, 42(4), 261-272. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1728-4465.2011.00289.x)
• Finer, L. B., & Hussain, R. (2013). Unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion in the Philippines: context and consequences. (https://www.guttmacher.org/report/unintended-pregnancy-and-unsafe-abortion-philippines-context-and-consequences?ref=vidupdatez.com/image)
• Flavier, J. M., & Chen, C. H. (1980). Induced abortion in rural villages of Cavite, the Philippines: Knowledge, attitudes, and practice. Studies in family planning, 65-71. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1965798)
• Gallen, M. (1979). Abortion choices in the Philippines. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial-science/article/abs/abortion-choices-in-the-philippines/853B8B71F95FEBDD0D88AB65E8364509 Journal of Biosocial Science, 11(3), 281-288.
• Holgersson, K. (2012). Is There Anybody Out There?: Illegal Abortion, Social Work, Advocacy and Interventions in the Philippines. (https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A574793&dswid=4931)

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When In Manila Search

We asked pinoys “should abortion be legal in the philippines” and the answers might surprise you.

The discussion of abortion has always been a difficult one, with people everywhere around the world being strongly divided on the subject. Recently, the state of Alabama in the USA passed an anti-abortion law that totally bans the procedure—a news that made headlines and resulted to a global discussion on the subject.

With all these recent talks surrounding abortion laws, it got us to thinking: how do Filipinos feel about abortion ? Should it be legal here?

Right now, it isn’t. And as a country with such strong religious (and not to mention conservative) roots, it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. But we wanted to find out how Pinoys feel on the subject and whether they think it should be legalized here or not. So, we asked our readers a question: “ Should abortion be made legal in the Philippines? ”

ALSO READ:  6 Married Couples Who Met on Dating Apps, Proving You Can Find Love Online

We kept our respondents’ names off this article to protect their identities, but all answers found below are authentic and are real responses submitted to us through our WIM Squad community on Facebook .

DISCLAIMER: The responses below are individual opinions from our community of readers and therefore do NOT necessarily reflect the opinions of WhenInManila.com as a whole.

Here’s what people said.

1. “No, I don’t think abortion should be made legal in the Philippines. If women think they’re practicing their right because “it’s their body”, then who are we to take away the right of the unborn child? Shouldn’t we protect their rights to live, too?

2. “I think abortion should be made legal, especially to those women who are rape victims. Because having a child after a traumatic experience can be detrimental for them for life.”

3. “My body, my choice. Regardless of tradition or religion, every woman must have the right to choose whether to get an abortion or not, should they want or need to. The hypocrisy of forcing women to have children they don’t want is absurd, especially for those who impose these rules and not upholding them after the child is born. Basically: pro-lifers only care about unborn babies. They stop giving a shit after, which begs the question: were they really pro-lifers in the first place or are they just controlling women?”

4. “Abortion as an option. Consider those who are victims of sexual abuse and those who have to terminate the pregnancy due to complications or possible threat to women’s health.”

5. “Yes, I believe it should be legal. People can’t keep using the “put the baby up for adoption” when they won’t acknowledge just how f*d up the system is. People have to understand that abortion is rarely, if ever, done out of spite or hatred of another living being. It’s acknowledging a person’s capability and/or their desire to be pregnant and raise a child.”

6. “Yes, but educate the public on safe sex more than abortion as an option especially for a country where poverty and population are issues.”

7. “Yes, it should be legal. I wouldn’t do it personally, but it should be an option to every women.”

8. “No. Philippines’ religion influence is higher than any other factors. Many contradictions will exist so as hard core debates in any further means of abortion topics etc.”

9. “For special cases, YES. Like for rape victims or health issues. Pero kung ang rason ay dahil gusto lang at hindi handa sa pinagbubuntis , oh com’on! Why did you do it without protection?”

10. “I am pro-choice. While I would never choose an abortion for myself, I do support other women’s right to do so as long as the legalities are clearly defined i.e. no late-term abortions, special provision for cases of rape and incest. Keeping it illegal doesn’t stop it from happening. It only means women are forced to undergo unsafe, fatal procedures.”

Read more responses on the next page!

About The Author

Managing Editor of WhenInManila.com. Connect with her on Instagram: @nicvillaluz

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Why decriminalizing abortion is not possible in the Philippines

Before the last national elections, as I was going through the platforms of senatorial and congressional candidates, I noticed that some of them said they will work for the “decriminalization of abortion.”

With the June 24, 2022 landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court on the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, which ruled that there is no such thing as a “constitutional right to abortion,” those intended moves on the part of these now elected lawmakers would seem to be passé. Now, the trend in the United States is to protect the life of the unborn by enacting state laws that will prohibit abortion.

The majority opinion of the US Supreme Court was written by Justice Samuel Alito. It is a masterpiece of philosophical and legal reasoning, and research on the history of the criminal nature of abortion in English and American jurisprudence. We can say that it is common sense which tells us that abortion is the killing of an innocent person who does not even have the capacity to defend himself. In our own language, we call a pregnant woman “nagdadalang-tao” (someone who is carrying within herself another human being). We naturally think she has inside her another person.

Decriminalizing abortion means removing the status of abortion as a crime. Laws have a role to play in the moral education of a society. When the laws remove the criminal status of a crime like abortion, it is teaching society that you may commit abortion and the state will not punish you. Go ahead. You can do it. The act is not banned.

In the context of the Philippines, the decriminalization of abortion is not possible because of our basic law, the Constitution . In Article II Section 12 it says, “[The state] shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.” How else can the state protect the life of the unborn except by banning abortion and imposing penalties on those who take away the life of the unborn? In the same way that Justice Alito repeated several times in his piece that there is no such thing as a right to abortion, it might be worth repeating that it is not possible to decriminalize abortion in the Philippines given our Constitution and given our culture and traditions.

Because abortion is prohibited in the Philippines, it is very difficult to get accurate data on the number of abortions performed in the country. There are only estimates that range from 600,000 to even over a million for the last year. This is not a small number to say the least. This is a real problem for our society. But decriminalizing abortion is not the solution. As the experience of the US shows, decriminalizing it made the problem worse.

Like poverty, abortion is a complex problem that will require a complex and manifold solution. It is above all a moral problem. The Catholic Church has always advocated the moral education of people so that their mores might conform to right reasoning about their sexuality and morality. At the root of the problem about unwanted pregnancies and abortions is difficulty about virtues related to human sexuality. Chastity is the virtue that is at stake here. It is grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted as meaning “don’t do this or that” or “being a killjoy.” Understood well, it means love, affirmation, and happiness in life.

The Church has also fought for the defense of the dignity of each human person. In the case of abortion, she has fought for respecting the dignity of both the mother and the unborn child. What happens in an abortion is that both the mother and the baby are reduced to and manipulated as commodities. Their personhoods are destroyed and eliminated. The existence of the post abortion stress syndrome attests to the destruction of the person of the women who committed abortion. They find it very difficult to live with the thought, “I killed my own baby!”

It might be better for our lawmakers to think about how to help those mothers who are contemplating having an abortion solve their problems and difficulties. They need counseling, financial help, moral support, livelihood, education. They don’t need the decriminalization of abortion.

FR. CECILIO L. MAGSINO [email protected]

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SCOTUS Has a Chance to Right the Wrong Its EMTALA Ruling Forced

Will it listen.

This week, the Supreme Court will hear a case that could have devastating and widespread consequences for pregnant patients, their families, and their health care providers—yes, even considering where we currently are with reproductive health care in this country. It involves Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which makes it a crime for the state’s physicians to terminate a pregnancy, even when termination is necessary to protect the mother’s health. As a result of that state’s cramped statutory exceptions for emergency abortion care, a woman showing up to an ER in Idaho could be at imminent risk of losing her reproductive organs, and yet a physician could still not be allowed to end her pregnancy to save them, unless or until she is about to die.

By contrast, right now, a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires that hospitals that participate in Medicare (meaning virtually every private hospital in the country) provide stabilizing care when the health of a patient is in serious jeopardy. As any emergency physician can explain , sometimes an abortion is the stabilizing care necessary to protect a patient’s health: to avoid loss of reproductive organs and fertility, loss of other organs, permanent disability, severe pain, dire mental health results, and a host of other horrible consequences, including—but also short of—risk of imminent death.

​Before Idaho’s law took effect, a federal district court in the state found that EMTALA and the Idaho law conflict: When a pregnant patient needs an abortion to stabilize a health emergency and consents to receive one, federal law requires that her doctors give her an abortion. The Idaho ban therefore criminalizes what federal law requires. Whenever that happens, the Constitution’s supremacy clause says federal law wins: Under what’s known as the preemption doctrine, federal law is the “supreme Law of the Land” and overrides the conflicting state law. The Idaho court thus temporarily ordered an exception to the Idaho law, allowing physicians to terminate a pregnancy when EMTALA requires it.

​In January, however, the Supreme Court disagreed. Leaping into the case before it was conclusively resolved, the high court issued a stay allowing Idaho’s law to take effect again, despite the conflict with EMTALA, ruling on its “ shadow docket ” and offering no opinion explaining its reasoning. On Wednesday, in the final week of the court’s term, the justices will hear oral argument in the case. They have an opportunity to undo the harm their earlier ruling has already caused. Their decision will affect the law not just in Idaho but in every state whose laws clash with EMTALA.

In the weeks since the high court paused EMTALA and allowed Idaho’s more stringent ban to go into effect, health care providers have experienced what can been seen only as a natural experiment in what happens when physicians are barred from delivering the kinds of medical assistance that is widely understood to be the standard of care in emergency rooms. Whereas the justices may have been able to plausibly claim back in January that they had no idea what it would mean to turn away patients who should have received stabilizing care under EMTALA, we now know. In fact, we can measure the harms. And in Idaho, over just a few months, the consequences of the Supreme Court’s stay have been devastating.

St. Luke’s Health System is the largest private employer in the state of Idaho and treats by far the most emergency patients. (Disclosure: Lindsay Harrison is counsel of record for St. Luke’s in the case.) In an amicus brief submitted to the court in this lawsuit, St. Luke’s explains that since the stay was imposed, it has continued to see patients with emergency medical conditions posing severe health risks short of death and that, as a result of the stay, those patients are suffering.

Because of the stay, Idaho physicians have essentially two options: First, because Idaho’s ban still allows for abortions to prevent death, they can certainly wait until the risks to a patient’s health become life-threatening. But the conditions that come with this state can be extremely painful. And if untreated, they can cause serious health complications, including systemic bleeding, liver hemorrhage and failure, kidney failure, stroke, seizure, and pulmonary edema. In these situations, watching a patient suffer and deteriorate until death is imminent is intolerable to most doctors. It is also medically unsound and dangerous.

Their best option is therefore the second and only alternative: Transfer the patient out of state. But this delays critical emergency care while transport is arranged, still forces patients to endure serious physical pain, and still risks potentially grave complications. It also distances patients from their families, homes, and support networks at a time when they most need them. And it is expensive and wholly unnecessary.

Despite the serious downsides of transfer, the numbers show starkly how that option has become the new “standard of care” in Idaho. In the whole of 2023, before Idaho’s law was in effect, only one pregnant patient presenting to St. Luke’s with an emergency was transferred out of state for care. Yet in the few months the new abortion law has been in effect, six pregnant St. Luke’s patients with medical emergencies have been transferred out of state for termination of their pregnancy. This is a dramatic change for a small state like Idaho, and what it shows is that the new crabbed definition of stabilizing care is already harming pregnant women. In an extremely short time, we have seen precisely the uptick in transfers that could have been predicted when SCOTUS allowed Idaho to end-run the federal statute: More patients are harmed, more patients are sent long distances for care, and more providers find themselves unable to offer necessary care.

Congress passed EMTALA decades ago to solve a serious problem—hospitals were dumping patients on other hospitals without considering their medical condition or how the transfer might harm them. The Supreme Court’s stay is now actually undermining the stated goal of the statute by literally forcing Idaho’s hospitals to transfer patients across state lines, instead of providing the emergency care they need.

When they hear arguments in this case, the justices should therefore bear in mind one other piece of data: The patients affected by this decision are still receiving exactly the same number of abortions they received before the stay because, for patients presenting with their particular medical emergencies, termination remains the standard of care. The St. Luke’s data thus proves that abortion care will still happen—but it will happen following costly and time-wasting emergency transfers, helicopter rides, and bleeding and pain for women who are often already experiencing the very worst day of their lives. The St. Luke’s numbers reveal that denying abortion care doesn’t save fetal life or protect maternal health. It just makes emergency care more expensive, higher-risk, and brutally painful.

A few weeks back, we saw the Supreme Court’s justices take it upon themselves to second-guess the practice of medicine and drug regulation in the mifepristone case. The EMTALA case offers a repeat opportunity for justices to publicly practice emergency medicine without a license, a knowledge base, or any solicitude for actual physicians and their real-life patients. Allowing the Idaho abortion statute to go into effect was a consequential legal error that has already demonstrably harmed pregnant people and their families while impeding doctors from offering the kind of health care they have been trained to deliver. This suffering is entirely avoidable. The court has the power to rectify this error. Now the justices also have the data to understand what will happen should they opt not to do so.

A Brief History of Abortion in the U.S.

Abortion wasn’t always a moral, political, and legal tinderbox. What changed?

A bortion laws have never been more contentious in the U.S. Yet for the first century of the country’s existence—and most of human history before that—abortion was a relatively uncontroversial fact of life.

“Abortion has existed for pretty much as long as human beings have existed,” says Joanne Rosen, JD, MA , a senior lecturer in Health Policy and Management who studies the impact of law and policy on access to abortion.

Until the mid-19th century, the U.S. attitude toward abortion was much the same as it had often been elsewhere throughout history: It was a quiet reality, legal until “quickening” (when fetal motion could be felt by the mother). In the eyes of the law, the fetus wasn’t a “separate distinct entity until then,” but rather an extension of the mother, Rosen explains.

What changed?

America’s first anti-abortion movement wasn’t driven primarily by moral or religious concerns like it is today. Instead, abortion’s first major foe in the U.S. was physicians on a mission to regulate medicine.

Until this point, abortion services had been “women’s work.” Most providers were midwives, many of whom made a good living selling abortifacient plants. They relied on methods passed down through generations, from herbal abortifacients and pessaries—a tampon-like device soaked in a solution to induce abortion—to catheter abortions that irritate the womb and force a miscarriage, to a minor surgical procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C), which remains one of the most common methods of terminating an early pregnancy.

The cottage abortion industry caught the attention of the fledgling American Medical Association, which was established in 1847 and, at the time, excluded women and Black people from membership. The AMA was keen to be taken seriously as a gatekeeper of the medical profession, and abortion services made midwives and other irregular practitioners—so-called quacks—an easy target. Their rhetoric was strategic, says Mary Fissell, PhD , the J. Mario Molina professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. “You have to link those midwives to providing abortion as a way of kind of getting them out of business,” Fissell says. “So organized medicine very much takes the anti-abortion position and stays with that for some time.”

Early 19th century and before

Abortion is legal in the U.S. until “quickening”

AMA campaigns to end abortion

At least 40 anti-abortion statutes are enacted in the U.S.

Comstock Act makes it illegal to sell or mail contraceptives or abortifacients

Late 19th century

OB-GYN emerges as a specialty

Griswold v. Connecticut decision finds that the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy, specifically in prescribing contraceptives, paving the way for Roe v. Wade

Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade enshrines abortion as a constitutional right

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey protects a woman's right to have an abortion prior to  fetal viability

Four states pass trigger laws making it a felony to perform, procure, or prescribe an abortion if Roe is ever overturned

Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey overturned; 13 states ban abortion by October 2022

In 1857, the AMA took aim at unregulated abortion providers with a letter-writing campaign pushing state lawmakers to ban the practice. To make their case, they asserted that there was a medical consensus that life begins at conception, rather than at quickening.

The campaign succeeded. At least 40 anti-abortion laws went on the books between 1860 and 1880.

And yet some doctors continued to perform abortions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By then, abortion was illegal in almost all states and territories, but during the Depression era, “doctors could see why women wouldn’t want a child,” and many would perform them anyway, Fissell says. In the 1920s and through the 1930s, many cities had physicians who specialized in abortions, and other doctors would refer patients to them “off book.”

That leniency faded with the end of World War II. “All across America, it’s very much about gender roles, and women are supposed to be in the home, having babies,” Fissell says. This shift in the 1940s and ’50s meant that more doctors were prosecuted for performing abortions, which drove the practice underground and into less skilled hands. In the 1950s and 1960s, up to 1.2 million illegal abortions were performed each year in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute . In 1965, 17% of reported deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth were associated with illegal abortion.

A rubella outbreak from 1963–1965 moved the dial again, back toward more liberal abortion laws. Catching rubella during pregnancy could cause severe birth defects, leading medical authorities to endorse therapeutic abortions . But these safe, legal abortions remained largely the preserve of the privileged. “Women who are well-to-do have always managed to get abortions, almost always without a penalty,” says Fissell. “But God help her if she was a single, Black, working-class woman.”

Women who could afford it brought their cases to court to fight for access to hospital abortions. Other women gained approval for abortions with proof from a physician that carrying the pregnancy would endanger her life or her physical or mental health. These cases set off a wave of abortion reform bills in state legislatures that helped set the stage for Roe v. Wade . By the time Roe was decided in 1973, legal abortions were already available in 17 states—and not just to save a woman’s life.

But raising the issue to the level of the Supreme Court and enshrining abortion rights for all Americans also galvanized opposition to it and mobilized anti-abortion groups. “ Roe was under attack virtually from the moment it was decided,” says Rosen.  

In 1992 another Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey posed the most significant existential threat to Roe . Rosen calls it “the case that launched a thousand abortion regulations,” upholding Roe but giving states far greater scope to regulate abortion prior to fetal viability. However, defining that nebulous milestone a became a flashpoint for debate as medical advancements saw babies survive earlier and earlier outside the womb. Sonograms became routine around the same time, making fetal life easier to grasp and “putting wind in the sails of the ‘pro-life’ movement,” Rosen says. Then in June, the Supreme Court overturned both Roe and Casey .

For many Americans, that meant the return to the conundrum that led Norma McCorvey—a.k.a. Jane Roe—to the Supreme Court in 1971: being poor and pregnant, and seeking an abortion in a state that had banned them in all but the narrowest of circumstances.

The history of abortion in the U.S. suggests the tides will turn again. “We often see periods of toleration followed by periods of repression,” says Fissell. The current moment is unequivocally marked by the latter. What remains to be seen is how long it will last.

From Public Health On Call Podcast

Supreme Court wrestles with abortion clash over emergency room treatment for pregnant women

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appeared divided Wednesday as it grappled with whether provisions of Idaho's near-total abortion ban unlawfully conflict with a federal law aimed at ensuring certain standards for emergency medical care for patients, including pregnant women.

Some conservative justices, who have a 6-3 majority, appeared skeptical about the Biden administration’s lawsuit arguing that the state ban restricts potentially lifesaving treatment for women suffering complications during pregnancy.

Liberal members of the court appeared to back the administration's position.

The justices are weighing an appeal brought by Idaho officials who are contesting a lawsuit the Biden administration filed over abortion access in emergency situations.

The state abortion law was enacted in 2020, with a provision stating it would go into effect if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that found women had a constitutional right to abortion.

The 2020 law, called the Defense of Life Act,  went into effect  in 2022 when the Supreme Court  rolled back  Roe.

The state law says anyone who performs an abortion is subject to criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison. Health care professionals found to have violated the law can lose their professional licenses.

The federal government sued, leading a federal judge in August 2022 to block the state from enforcing provisions concerning medical care that is required under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA.

The federal law, enacted in 1986, requires that patients receive appropriate emergency room care. The Biden administration argues that care should include abortions in certain situations. The law applies to any hospital that receives federal funding under the Medicare program.

There is an exception to the Idaho law if an abortion is necessary to protect the life of the pregnant woman, although the scope of the exception came under close scrutiny during the oral argument.

Idaho’s lawyer, Joshua Turner, faced tough questioning about whether the exception can also apply to a situation in which a woman has complications that pose a substantial health risk but not imminent death.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan said federal law says “that you don’t have to wait until the person is on the verge of death.”

“If the woman is going to lose her reproductive organs, that’s enough to trigger this duty on the part of the hospital to stabilize the patient,” she said.

Fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked similar questions, providing several examples of real-life situations in which women have faced emergency situations when doctors had to make calls about whether to authorize abortions, including a situation in which a patient at 16 weeks of pregnancy whose water broke was at risk of sepsis or a hemorrhage after she was refused an abortion in Florida.

"Is that a case in which Idaho the day before would have said it's OK to have an abortion?" Sotomayor asked.

Turner argued that such medical decisions are “subjective” and that a doctor’s judgment in such instances would be based on good faith, not an objective standard.

Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, indicated they saw Idaho’s law as allowing for treatment similar to what the Biden administration says the federal law requires, suggesting that there may not be any conflict.

At one point Barrett said she was "shocked" at Turner's answers to questions about what kind of treatment was allowed, because "I thought your own expert had said below that these kinds of cases were covered."

Kavanaugh likewise questioned the daylight between the two laws, wondering what the implications are if "Idaho law allows an abortion in each of the emergency circumstances that is identified by the government."

"What does that mean for what we're deciding here?" he asked Turner.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito seemed most skeptical of the federal government's argument, at one point mentioning language in the federal law referring to treatment for an "unborn child," a term more commonly used by anti-abortion advocates.

"Isn't that an odd phrase to put in a statute that imposes a mandate to perform abortions?" Alito asked Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

"Have you seen abortion statutes that use the phrase 'unborn child'? Doesn't that tell us something?"

Prelogar responded that the phrase did not displace the requirement that women get the treatment they need in emergency situations.

Conservative justices, including Neil Gorsuch, also questioned whether the federal government even has the power to mandate health standards when they are tied to Medicare funding.

In January, the Supreme Court allowed Idaho to enforce the provisions while also agreeing to hear oral arguments in the case. Other provisions of the ban are already in effect and will not be affected by how the justices rule.

The decision will affect not just Idaho but also other states, including Texas, that have enacted similar abortion bans that abortion-rights advocates say clash with the federal law.

In blocking parts of the state law that conflict with federal law, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill described the state’s actions as putting doctors in a difficult situation.

“The doctor believes her EMTALA obligations require her to offer that abortion right now. But she also knows that all abortions are banned in Idaho. She thus finds herself on the horns of a dilemma. Which law should she violate?” he wrote.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals briefly put Winmill’s ruling on hold in September, but it subsequently allowed it to go back into effect, prompting the state officials to turn to the Supreme Court.

Prelogar wrote in court papers that EMTALA requires "necessary stabilizing treatment," which in cases involving pregnant women in emergency situations may require abortions.

"And in those limited but critically important circumstances EMTALA requires the hospital to offer that care," she added.

The state argues that it was only after Roe was overturned that the Biden administration said EMTALA could be interpreted to require abortions in some contexts, calling it a "nationwide abortion mandate."

EMTALA "merely prohibits emergency rooms from turning away indigent patients with serious medical conditions," Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador wrote in court papers. The law was not intended to override state laws regulating health care, he added.

The Idaho dispute is one of two abortion cases now pending at the Supreme Court, both of which arose in the aftermath of the 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. In the other case, the court is considering a challenge that could restrict access to mifepristone, the drug most commonly used for medication abortions.

Lawrence Hurley covers the Supreme Court for NBC News.

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The reality of abortion in the Philippines

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

J ust this August, Maria (not her real name), a 21-year old rape victim who became pregnant as a result of the rape with a child with dwarfism condition, died a day after giving birth due to childbirth complications.  Her mother lamented that her daughter might be alive today had her daughter been able access to safe and legal  abortion .

I have interviewed many poor women who divulged risking their health and lives by self-inducing  abortion  using catheters or dispensing drugs without proper dosage and supervision eventually suffering complications.  

Such cases are common in our country where over half of the pregnancies are unintended, and about 17% and one-third of the unintended pregnancies end in  abortion  nationwide and in the National Capital Region, respectively, and where two-thirds of those who induce  abortion  are poor.  

Views, religion, and abortion 

The 2004 national survey on  abortion  showed that nearly 90% of those who induce  abortion  are Catholic. Regardless of Church teachings, Filipino women still resort to  abortion  with the poor, rural and young women being the most vulnerable to self-induced unsafe  abortion .

Although the Reproductive Health (RH) Law provides humane, non-judgmental, compassionate post- abortion  care and, a law known as RA 8344 provides for stabilizing patients in serious cases such as when a woman is bleeding due to complications from self-induced unsafe  abortion , making  abortion  safe and legal is the best means for women who resort to  abortion  to be assured that their health and lives are not at risk. 

 Even with RA 8344, the problem, in the past years and until now, is that some medical health care providers erroneously deny life-saving procedures even in cases of intrauterine fetal death where therapeutic  abortion  is needed to save the life of the woman.  

In cases of ectopic pregnancy where the pregnancy occurs outside the uterine cavity, surgery is necessary to save a woman’s life . Within a few hours from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, the abdomen becomes rigid and the woman goes into shock. Ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening, emergency condition requiring immediate surgery.

Expressing negative views on  abortion  is dangerous because it maintains the status quo where many medical providers threaten women with prosecution in cases of intrauterine fetal death, spontaneous  abortion ,  abortion  due to trauma from intimate partner violence and self-induced  abortion .  

As a consequence of these threats of prosecution, women end up dying because they delay going to hospitals or do not seek emergency medical care at all.

Judgmental views about known abortifacients such as  Cytotec  must be eliminated because these are lifesaving medications  necessary for the evacuation of the uterus for incomplete  abortion , missed  abortion , intrauterine fetal death,  severe eclampsia, labor induction, post-partum hemorrhage, and cervical ripening prior to obstetrical/gynecological procedures such as therapeutic curettage and insertion of intrauterine devices.

Abortion and law

The current criminal law on  abortion  is an outdated colonial law that violates the rights to health and life of Filipino women.  

It was a direct translation of the old Spanish Penal Code of 1870s that used to criminalize  abortion —in the time of the Spanish friars and conquistadores.   Without knowing the full consequences of such a harsh and restrictive law, our Congress enacted the criminal provision in our Revised Penal Code of 1930.  

At the time the law was adopted, Filipino women did not even have the right to vote, there was no Universal Declaration of Human Rights and no international human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1976), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1976), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1981), Convention Against Torture (CAT, 1987), and Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1990).  These came much later.

Denying women access to safe and legal  abortion  is a means to control women’s bodies, propagating subordination of women where women’s decisions including personal decisions related to pregnancy and childbirth are totally disregarded. 

Permitting restrictions on women’s right to decide their own bodies perpetuate discrimination against women and inequality of women in law in clear violation of women’s right to equal protection of the law and women’s right to privacy.  

Allowing penal provisions imposed on women who induce  abortion  and those who assist them to prevail in Philippine law based on religious standards violates the constitutional guarantee of non-establishment of religion. 

Denying access to safe and legal  abortion  is a public health issue.  

The illegality of  abortion  with no clear exceptions drives women to self-induce  abortion  unnecessarily endangering their health and lives. If we want health care service providers to provide humane, non-judgmental, compassionate post- abortion  care and if we want to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity due to unsafe  abortion , then we should rethink the archaic colonial law that restricts access to safe and legal  abortion.

We should also welcome discussion on exceptions in cases of rape, incest, danger to the health and life of the woman,  grave fetal infirmity  incompatible with life outside the uterus, or allow  abortion  up to 14 weeks of pregnancy or, better yet, simply repeal the penal provisions imposing penalty on the women who induce  abortion  and the service providers assisting them.

In other countries

Access to safe and legal  abortion  is also a social justice issue with rich women being able to go to places like Hong Kong where  abortion  is safe and legal while poor women who do not have funds to go abroad end up self-inducing unsafe abortion .  

We need to address the prevailing inequality besetting poor women. Serving this social justice concern will contribute to greatly reducing maternal deaths and morbidity related to self-induced unsafe  abortion .  

Allowing outmoded colonial penal laws on  abortion  in Philippine law makes us all complicit to the estimated 3 women who die each day from self-induced unsafe  abortion .  Letting such law prevail in our society breeds hatred and hostility towards Filipino women who resorted to self-induced and unsafe  abortion . Our laws should never countenance this.   

Other predominantly Catholic countries and former Spanish colonies have liberalized their laws on  abortion.  

Spain legalized  abortion  on request during the first 14 weeks of the pregnancy in 2010 and other predominantly Catholic countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Costa Rica, and Ireland and former Spanish colonies such as Uruguay and Colombia allowed  abortion  on certain grounds. This leaves the Philippines to contend with its antiquated colonial Spanish law.  

Asian countries such as China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam have liberal  abortion  laws while Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand have recently liberalized their laws to allow  abortion  on certain grounds.

Some people mistakenly believe that the Philippine Constitution prohibits  abortion  because of the provision on equal protection of the life of the woman and the unborn from conception.  

On the contrary, other countries with constitutions and laws explicitly protecting the life of the unborn or life from conception allow  abortion  under certain exceptions such as Ireland, Slovak Republic, Poland, Kenya, Hungary, and Costa Rica.

In the complaint of LC v Peru filed with the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee), L.C. was 13 years old when a 34-year old man started sexually abusing her.  She became pregnant as a result of the rape and, in a state of depression, attempted suicide by jumping from a building, suffering spinal injuries with “a risk of permanent disability.”  

Despite her serious and deteriorating condition, her doctors refused to perform an operation because she was pregnant and denied her request for therapeutic  abortion . L.C. then miscarried spontaneously.  

The Committee recommended to Peru in 2009 to provide reparation to L.C., review its laws to establish effective access to therapeutic  abortion , include protocols to ensure health services are available and accessible in public facilities, and decriminalize  abortion  when the pregnancy results from rape.

The 2006 CEDAW Concluding Comments recommended for the Philippines to remove the punitive provisions imposed on women who induce  abortion  and to provide access to quality services for the management of complications arising from unsafe  abortions  to reduce maternal mortality rates.

In the 2014 CEDAW Committee report on the inquiry on reproductive rights violations in the Philippines, the Committee recommended for the Philippines to amend articles 256 to 259 of the Revised Penal Code to “legalize  abortion  in cases of rape, incest, threats to the life and/or health of the mother, or serious malformation of the fetus and decriminalize all other cases where women undergo  abortion .”

Upholding reproductive rights

In this day and age, we must uphold reproductive rights to the fullest extent where we champion women’s rights. Our country will be a step closer to women’s equality when every woman who decides to have an  abortion  is able to do so in a safe and legal manner.  

We owe such enabling environment to our mothers, sisters, and daughters who risked their health and lives by making the difficult decision to self-induce unsafe  abortion  and most especially to the women and adolescent girls who were hospitalized, threatened by health care providers, and those who died because of our long-standing restrictive  abortion  laws. 

Our rule of law is governed by secular standards, not religious standards.  To uphold women’s rights to equality and eliminate discrimination, women must have access to safe and legal  abortion . Philippine law must uphold secular standards, human rights, and public health.  

We should all should work towards a humane society where no woman should die from unsafe  abortion . Making  abortion  safe and legal will save the lives of women.  –  Rappler.com 

Clara Rita Padilla is the founder and executive director of EnGendeRights. She spearheaded the submission of the request for inquiry to the CEDAW Committee. She holds a Juris Doctor degree from the Ateneo de Manila University and has been practicing law for over 21 years working in the field of gender, gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

Photo of equipment and ultrasonograph from Shutterstock  

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Supreme Court Appears Sharply Divided in Emergency Abortion Case

The justices weighed whether a federal law aimed at protecting access to emergency medical care superseded Idaho’s near-total abortion ban.

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By Abbie VanSickle

Reporting from Washington

• April 24, 2024

The Supreme Court appeared sharply divided on Wednesday over whether federal law should allow doctors to perform emergency abortions in states with near-total bans on the procedure, in a case that could determine access to abortion in emergency rooms across the country.

The lively, two-hour argument focused on a clash between Idaho, whose law limits access to abortion unless the life of the pregnant woman is in danger, and federal law. Questioning by the justices suggested a divide along ideological — and possibly gender — lines.

“What Idaho is doing is waiting for women to wait and deteriorate and suffer the lifelong health consequences with no possible upside for the fetus,” said Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, arguing on behalf of the federal government. “It just stacks tragedy upon tragedy.”

Justice Elena Kagan interjected that the current situation seemed untenable: “It can’t be the right standard of care to force somebody onto a helicopter.”

Although the collision between the two laws affects only those women who face dire medical complications during pregnancy, a broad decision could have implications for more than a dozen states that have enacted near-total bans on abortion since the court overturned a constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022.

The dispute was the second time in less than a month that the Supreme Court has grappled with abortion. It is a potent reminder that even after Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. vowed in 2022 that the issue would return to elected representatives, it continues to make its way back to the court. In late March, the justices considered the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone.

The federal law at issue, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, enacted by Congress in 1986, mandates that hospitals receiving federal funds provide patients with stabilizing care.

Under Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion, the procedure is illegal except in cases of incest, rape, some instances of nonviable pregnancies or when it is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” Doctors who perform abortions could face criminal penalties, prison time and loss of their licenses to practice medicine.

The Biden administration maintains that the federal law conflicts with — and should override — Idaho’s. Lawyers for the state contend that the administration has improperly interpreted the federal law in a way that would bypass state bans.

Abortion opponents assert the Biden administration is trying to use the federal law to turn hospitals into legal abortion sites in states where the procedure is mostly banned.

Several of the conservative justices appeared skeptical of the federal government’s argument that the decades-old law aimed at preventing “patient dumping” — hospitals refusing to treat the poor and uninsured — should override Idaho’s abortion restrictions.

“How can you impose restrictions on what Idaho can criminalize simply because hospitals in Idaho have chosen to participate in Medicare?” Justice Alito asked.

The three liberal justices pushed back strongly on the lawyer arguing for Idaho, Joshua N. Turner, broaching several examples of pregnant women facing severe complications that could leave them unable to have children or with debilitating injuries. They also cited recent reports that, since Idaho’s ban went into effect, hospitals have flown several women to other states to receive emergency abortion care. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, joined the tough questioning.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared skeptical of Mr. Turner’s argument that the state’s law allows for doctors to make a good-faith determination about whether a patient’s life is in danger, describing a patient whose water broke early and required a hysterectomy and abortion.

“She can no longer have children,” Justice Sotomayor said. “All right? You’re telling me the doctor there couldn’t have done the abortion earlier?”

“Again, it goes back to whether a doctor can in good-faith medical judgment —” Mr. Turner began.

“That’s a lot for the doctor to risk,” Justice Sotomayor replied.

Justice Barrett asked what would happen if a local prosecutor did not agree with a doctor’s judgment that an abortion was necessary.

When Mr. Turner answered that “it is very case by case,” Justice Barrett joined in: “I’m kind of shocked actually because I thought your own expert had said below that these kinds of cases were covered,” she said.

Even as Mr. Turner responded that such cases would be covered if a doctor acted in good faith, Justice Barrett continued to probe.

“What if the prosecutor thought differently?” she asked. “What if the prosecutor thought, well, I don’t think any good-faith doctor could draw that conclusion.”

“That, your honor, is the nature of prosecutorial discretion, and it may result in a case,” Mr. Turner said.

An extended exchange between Justice Alito and Ms. Prelogar raised a broader question about whether some of the conservative justices may be prepared to embrace the language of fetal personhood, that is, the notion that a fetus would have the same rights as a pregnant woman.

Justice Alito, who had relied on the language of fetal personhood in writing the court’s majority opinion in Dobbs, noted that “one potentially very important phrase” had not been mentioned — the federal law's “reference to the woman’s quote, unquote, unborn child.”

“Isn’t that an odd phrase to put in a statute that imposes a mandate to perform abortions?” Justice Alito asked. “Have you ever seen an abortion statute that uses the phrase ‘unborn child?’”

Ms. Prelogar responded that it made sense in terms of that federal law because it was an attempt to ensure that hospitals treated both a pregnant woman and the fetus in an emergency medical situation.

The Biden administration has relied on EMTALA as a narrow way to challenge state-level abortion bans.

After the court overturned a constitutional right to an abortion, near-total bans on the procedure swiftly took effect in some states, including in Idaho .

Once the Republican-controlled Legislature in the state passed the Defense of Life Act, which makes it a crime to perform or assist in performing an abortion, the Biden administration sued the state in August 2022, arguing that federal law should trump the state law when the two directly conflict.

The federal law specifies that a hospital must provide care to a person with an “emergency medical condition.” For pregnant women, the law states, that means when “the absence of immediate medical attention could reasonably be expected” to jeopardize “the health of the woman or her unborn child.”

If a hospital breaks the federal law, it can be sued and potentially lose Medicare funding. The federal law also includes a provision that it will not pre-empt a state or local law unless “the requirement directly conflicts with” it.

But the state law imposes a prison sentence of up to five years if it is violated and can lead to the loss of a doctor’s medical license.

A federal trial judge temporarily blocked the state’s ban. Last fall, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put the ruling on hold and reinstated the ban. But that decision was ultimately overridden by an 11-member panel of the appeals court, which temporarily blocked Idaho’s law as the appeal continued.

Outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday, demonstrators gathered at competing rallies.

Mylissa Farmer, 43, who said she was denied an abortion in Missouri and Kansas after her water broke at 17 weeks, spoke in support of the federal law’s protections.

“I just don’t want anyone else to go through what I did,” Ms. Farmer said. “That’s why I’m speaking out, because it’s so wrong, and I don’t see any kind of light.”

Just steps away, about a dozen anti-abortion demonstrators raised signs that read “Abortion betrays women” and “Emergency rooms are not abortion clinics.”

“What this law would do is it essentially make our hospitals and emergency rooms abortion clinics,” Bethany Janzen, 30, the founder of an anti-abortion group, said of the federal law. “And that’s a problem.”

Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.

Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting. More about Abbie VanSickle