Anti-abortion state officials are asking the US Supreme Court to overturn a person’s right to a medically necessary abortion as is currently required under federal law.
Two lawsuits, one brought by Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador and the other by Idaho’s Republican legislature, target the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTLA), a cornerstone of the US health care system.
The act is a national mandate stipulating that if a person shows up at a hospital’s emergency room with a medical emergency, the hospital must treat them — regardless of the patient’s ability to pay.
That federal requirement could be read as dictating that emergency rooms have to provide abortions when medically necessary, even if the procedure is otherwise banned under state law. Idaho Republicans, however, want the Court to decide that those abortions should not be permitted. The state banned abortions in all stages of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest, and saving the life of the pregnant person, after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Idaho’s exceptions don’t fully align with EMTLA’s protections; while a medical situation endangering the life of the pregnant person would count as a medical emergency, the act doesn’t limit medically necessary procedures to life-or-death situations. It requires the hospital to offer treatment to the patient if the person’s health is in serious jeopardy, if there is a risk of serious impairment to their bodily functions, or if there is serious dysfunction of any body part or organ.
Imagine this scenario: A pregnant patient walks through the emergency room doors with an emergency that is not likely to kill the person but could irrevocably damage their uterus. Under the plain text of EMTLA, Vox’s Ian Millheiser writes, the hospital would be required to perform an abortion to prevent that loss of bodily function if the person desires it. Such a procedure would be illegal under Idaho law, however.
- Idaho’s case rests on two arguments about the EMTLA. One, that it’s invalid because federal employees legally cannot have control over the practice of medicine and, two, that the law’s wording requires hospitals to also stabilize a person’s “unborn child” if they are in peril during an ongoing medical emergency.
- But there are clear flaws in the state’s legal theory, the Biden administration counters.
- First, the provision about controlling the practice of medicine applies to federal employees, not to Congress, which has written all kinds of laws over the years concerning the provision of health care.
- Second, the hospital is not required to perform an abortion against a patient’s wishes. The law says the hospital must offer treatment to stabilize the patient. So in the tragic scenario when both the pregnant person and fetus are at risk, the hospital is supposed to explain the risks and benefits of different treatment options to the patient (or their family) and then follow the decision that the patient makes.
- The Constitution makes these “easy cases,” Ian writes. The US Constitution dictates that in situations where federal law and state law conflict, as appears to be the case with Idaho and EMTLA, the federal statute overrides the state’s policy.
- Nothing can be taken for granted with SCOTUS and abortion, however. A lower federal court initially ruled that EMTLA must be enforced for medically necessary abortions, but a panel of Trump-appointed appeals judges briefly stayed that decision before being reversed. The question now, Ian concludes, is whether the justices will follow the letter of the law.
Read the rest of Ian’s analysis of the newest SCOTUS abortion cases here.
No comments:
Post a Comment