Republican- and Democratic-appointed members of the Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared sharply divided regarding whether Idaho’s near-total prohibition of abortions conflicts with federal emergency medicine statutes.

The oral arguments focused on whether Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which only prohibits abortion in cases of rape, incest, or to prevent the death of the mother, is too narrow to cover emergency conditions in which a woman may not be in immediate danger of her life.

Arguing on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that the requirement that a woman be on the verge of death prior to receiving an emergency abortion violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” in cases of emergencies.

The case came before the Supreme Court following Idaho’s appeal of an injunction placed on the state’s anti-abortion statute from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear Idaho’s case in January, it overrode the lower body’s injunction, allowing the state’s abortion ban to take effect until a final decision is made in June.

Prelogar argued that in cases with life-threatening complications that are likely but not immediately present, such as severe pre-eclampsia or premature rupture of membranes, physicians should be able to treat the condition by aborting the fetus.

“In cases like these where there is no other way to stabilize the woman’s medical condition and prevent her from deteriorating,” Prelogar said. “EMTALA’s plain text requires that she be offered pregnancy termination as the necessary treatment. And that’s how this law has been understood and applied for decades.”

Josh Turner, representing the state of Idaho as the chief of constitutional litigation, argued that in these extreme circumstances, the physician must make the determination in his or her “good faith medical judgment” as to whether the abortion would be necessary to prevent eventual death from serious complications.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Turner on this matter, listing several hypothetical examples of where this could prove difficult.

“If objective medical care requires you to treat women who present the potential of serious medical complications, and the abortion is the only thing that can prevent that, you have to do it” under EMTALA, Sotomayor said. “Idaho law says the doctor has to determine not that there’s really a serious medical condition but that the person will die. That’s a huge difference.”

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“The doctor doesn’t need to have medical certainty,” Turner responded.

Prelogar said there are six other states with abortion restrictions with the exception of preventing death rather than to save the life and health of the mother, and these are the states with which the Biden administration is most concerned.

This is a developing story.