The Biden administration is demanding emergency room doctors to perform emergency abortions – regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling surrounding whether state abortion bans overrule federal law.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Director Chiquita Brooks-LaSure sent a letter to doctor and hospital associations on July 2.
In the letter, both officials reminded hospitals they have the legal duty to provide stabilizing treatment — including abortions in some cases. “No pregnant woman or her family should have to even begin to worry that she could be denied the treatment she needs to stabilize her emergency medical condition in the emergency room,” the letter read.
“And yet, we have heard story after story describing the experiences of pregnant women presenting to hospital emergency departments with emergency medical conditions and being turned away because medical providers were uncertain about what treatment they were permitted to provide.”
The administration’s move is one of its latest efforts to build awareness surrounding a federal law from 1986—the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, also known as EMTALA. According to CNN, the law requires all US hospitals receiving Medicare money to service all persons who come into an emergency room and determine if the patient has an emergency medical condition.
Hospitals are to give stabilizing treatment to patients regardless of their ability to pay for those services. Hospitals that refuse to provide care or turn patients away could be subjected to federal investigations, fines, or loss of Medicare funding.
The formal warning comes just days after the Supreme Court moved to pass an appeal on Idaho’s strict abortion ban, causing one large hospital system to send some pregnant patients out of state by way of air transport to have treatment. The state ban criminalizes almost all abortions and prohibits doctors from performing an abortion even if the pregnancy is putting the patient’s health in grave danger.
The state of Texas is also under the microscope for its six-week abortion ban. However, enforcement is on hold, given a lower court ruling.
The law singled pregnant people out in 1989 after claims of hospitals refusing to care for uninsured women in labor. Thanks to Congress, EMTALA expanded to include
pregnant people with contractions. After the Biden administration released the Reinforcement of EMTALA Obligation in 2021 — stating a doctor’s duty to provide stabilizing treatment “preempts any directly conflicting state law or mandate that might otherwise prohibit or prevent such treatment” — it did not specify on abortions. In July 2022, the law was amended to include stabilization abortion care if it is medically necessary.Anti-abortion groups like the Texas Alliance for Life have already responded to the letter in defense of Idaho’s law, claiming the Biden administration “falsely suggests that Idaho and other state pro-life laws fail to protect women facing life-threatening emergencies during pregnancy.” “This is untrue,” the group said in a statement.
“All state pro-life laws provide an abortion exception for
those rare but tragic circumstances in which a pregnancy poses a threat to a mother’s life, including circumstances when death is not imminent. Those include Texas and Idaho.” According to experts, regulations surrounding emergency room treatment since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2021, allowing states to make their own abortion restriction laws. Since the ruling, 41 states have abortion bans with limited exceptions, including rape and incest. A total of 14 states have total bans.RELATED CONTENT: New Hampshire Teacher Fired After Allegedly Driving Student To Get Abortion