WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration told emergency room doctors they must perform emergency abortions when necessary to save a pregnant woman’s health, following 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.
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.
The letter is the Biden administration’s latest attempt to raise awareness about a 40-year-old federal law that 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.
The emergency room is the last place that the Democratic White House has argued it can federally require rare emergency abortions to be performed, despite strict state abortion bans.
The Biden administration has argued that this conflicts with a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA. »
