Feds Say Hospitals Must Provide Emergency Abortions

The Biden administration has told emergency room doctors they must perform emergency abortions when necessary to save a pregnant woman's health. The move follows last week's Supreme Court ruling that failed to settle a legal dispute over whether state abortion bans override a federal law requiring hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment.

• In a letter being sent Tuesday to doctor and hospital associations, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Director Chiquita Brooks-LaSure reminded hospitals of their legal duty to offer stabilizing treatment, which could include abortions. A copy of the letter was obtained by the AP..

• "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 said.
• It continued, "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."
• CMS will also resume investigations into complaints against emergency rooms in Idaho, after the Supreme Court ruled last week that hospitals there must be allowed to perform emergency abortions for now, despite the state's abortion ban. But enforcement in Texas, the country's most populous state with a strict six-week abortion ban , will still be on hold because of a lower court ruling.

• In Idaho, enforcement of the federal law in emergency abortion cases had been on hold since January, when the state's strict abortion ban took effect. Idaho's state law threatens doctors with prison sentences if they perform an abortion, with an exception only if a pregnant woman's life, not her health, is at risk.
• The Biden administration has argued that this conflicts with a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA. Roughly 50,000 women every year develop serious pregnancy complications, like blood loss, sepsis, or organ loss. Some of those women may show up in emergency rooms and in the most serious cases where a fetus is unlikely to be viable, doctors may recommend a termination of the pregnancy.
• The 40-year-old federal law requires almost all emergency rooms—any that receive Medicare dollars—to provide stabilizing treatment for patients in a medical emergency. When hospitals turn away patients or refuse to provide that care, they are subject to federal investigations, hefty fines, and loss of Medicare funding.

(More abortion stories.)