When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death. The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.

If that description seems hyperbolic, consider the facts of Tuesday’s decision, Texas v. Becerra. It involves a clash between a federal law and Texas’ stringent abortion ban. Texas law reflects the anti-abortion movement’s fundamental hostility toward any health exceptions; it permits emergency abortions only when a patient is “at risk of death” or “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” Any doctor who terminates a pregnancy before this point is subject to a 99-year prison term. The Texas Supreme Court affirmed the narrow scope of this exception last month when it forbade Kate Cox from terminating her pregnancy. Cox suffered “severe cramps, leaking fluid and elevated vital signs” due to an abnormality that rendered the fetus incompatible with life. Yet the court unanimously decreed that, until her symptoms grew considerably more dire, Cox was legally obligated to continue the failing pregnancy.

This draconian ban, and others like it, conflicts with a federal statute, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA. That law compels federally funded hospitals to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” to any patient experiencing an “emergency medical condition.” It defines the term as any condition that........

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