BOSTON (WHDH) - Massachusetts officials including Gov. Maura Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell shared their reactions Thursday to a pair of Supreme Court rulings on emergency abortions and a nationwide settlement involving Purdue Pharma, which produced the opioid OxyContin.
The rulings came as the Supreme Court winds down its current term.
In the abortion ruling, the court considered a case challenging an Idaho law that only allows hospitals to perform abortions when a pregnant woman’s life is in danger. Under the law, some patients have needed to travel to other states when their pregnancies endanger their health but not their lives.
The Supreme Court threw the matter back to a state court and effectively allowed emergency abortions to be performed in Idaho until the case is finally decided.
“We can take no comfort in this ruling,” Healey said in a statement. “It leaves open the very real possibility that states could prevent pregnant women from getting emergency, life-saving treatment, including abortions.”
“Extreme, near-total abortion bans remain in effect across the country,” Healey said”. When women’s rights and freedoms are threatened, all of our rights and freedoms are threatened.”
Campbell said the decision was “an important reprieve that will allow pregnant people in Idaho to obtain an emergency abortion if their life or health is in serious jeopardy.”
“While I am grateful that Idaho’s draconian abortion ban will not bar emergency abortions in the near future, I want to be clear that more trouble appears to be on the horizon for emergency abortion access in many states,” Campbell said.
Outside public office, Northeastern University Dean of Constitutional Law Jeremy Paul shared his reaction, explaining how justices were actually split on the case.
Three justices were in favor of Idaho’s ban. Three favored federal protections allowing doctors to perform emergency abortions for the health of a mother. The three remaining justices did not indicate which way they were leaning, simply saying they thought the court should not have got involved in this case at this point.
“The case that was decided today was really important because it shifted the balance,” Paul said. “Now, from now going forward, federal law prevails.”
“The key point about federal law is it allows doctors to perform abortions in order to protect the health of the mother,” he continued.
Officials react to Purdue ruling
In the Purdue case, justices rejected a nationwide settlement with the company.
State and local governments had joined with victims to hammer out the agreement. Under the deal, Purdue would have sent billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.
The settlement would have also shielded members of the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, from civil lawsuits over the tool of the opioid crisis.
“Today’s decision will never erase the role that Purdue and the Sacklers had in creating the opioid crisis, destroying the lives of American families, and exploiting a broken legal system to protect their billions,” said Healey, who sued the Sackler family when she served as Massachusetts’s attorney general.
“I will never stop working for the families who have been hurt in this crisis and for the communities that desperately need these resources for prevention, treatment and recovery,” Healey said.
“It is no secret that members of the Sackler family, through their control of Purdue, fueled the opioid crisis, devastating countless lives in the pursuit of profit,” Campbell said. “The Sacklers must and will be held responsible, and, in the wake of this decision, we will use every power available to us to make sure that occurs.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren shared her own reaction in a statement, saying “The Sackler family made a fortune from hooking people to opioids that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
Warren said the family “then tried to use the bankruptcy system to keep their money.”
“The Supreme Court closed this bankruptcy loophole, but that doesn’t make things right for the millions of people who have lost loved ones to opioid overdoses,” Warren said. “This is a first step towards accountability for the Sackler family. It’s time for the Sacklers to pay up.”
The Purdue settlement had backing from many people who have been addicted to opioids and their families, as reported by CNN.
But the Department of Justice opposed the deal, specifically focusing on the portion that would shield Purdue Pharma from future litigation.
In his majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch said Congress should decide whether parties like the Sackler family could be shielded from lawsuits in cases like the Purdue Pharma settlement, CNN reported.
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