Supreme Court Should Shut Down Joe Biden’s Attempt to Force ERs to Do Abortions
Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, two consolidated cases questioning whether the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) supersedes Idaho’s near-total abortion ban and can force physicians to perform abortions in emergency situations.
Idaho’s “Defense of Life Act” was enacted in 2020 and took effect when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The law makes it a felony for doctors to perform an abortion unless it’s necessary to save the life of the mother. Soon after Roe’s overturning, the Biden administration sued the State of Idaho arguing EMTALA trumps the state’s abortion law and requires doctors to perform abortions under a broader set of exceptions than just to preserve the life of the mother. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill agreed and prevented Idaho from enforcing the law where it conflicted with EMTALA. A three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals briefly overturned that decision stating even if EMTALA does preempt Idaho’s law, its exemption for the life of the mother was sufficient to keep the laws out of conflict. However, the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and quickly reversed that ruling forcing the State and Idaho Speaker of the House Mike Moyle to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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In January 2024, the High Court agreed to hear the case and granted Idaho’s emergency request to enforce the ban in hospital emergency rooms while it decides the issue, which temporarily denies a Biden administration effort to force hospitals to perform abortions in the state.
Under EMTALA, Medicare-funded hospitals are required to provide necessary emergency care to pregnant women without discrimination, including if they cannot pay for the treatment. Even though the scope of EMTALA only deals with discrimination and does not even mention abortion, Secretary Xavier Becerra of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has interpreted the law differently. He issued policy guidance in July 2022 to hospitals stating that EMTALA preempts state abortion laws and requires hospitals receiving Medicare funding to perform emergency abortions.
The guidance set forth an interpretation that state abortion laws with more narrow exceptions than EMTALA are “preempted,” and that physicians “must” perform an abortion if they feel abortion is “the stabilizing treatment necessary” to resolve an emergency medical condition. Under the guidance, hospitals could lose federal funding for failing to comply.
While the Biden administration argues that the HHS “guidance” is just clarifying existing federal law, the Idaho legislature and state officials called the disputed HHS guidance an “unauthorized power grab” and stated it would have been “odd” for Congress to negate “state abortion laws” in a provision that “does not even mention abortion.”
Now that SCOTUS has allowed Idaho’s protections for unborn babies to remain in effect for the time being, doctors who perform abortions are subject to penalties ranging from two to five years in jail, fines, and suspension or revocation of their medical licenses.
The outcome of this case will likely affect a nearly identical dispute in Texas. In January 2024, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Biden administration cannot use EMTALA to override Texas’ near-total abortion ban and force Texas doctors to perform abortions. In Texas v. Becerra, a three-judge appeals court panel called the guidance “unlawful” and unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that struck down the guidance.
Authoring the ruling, Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt determined that EMTALA does not discard the unborn child during a life-threatening medical emergency, and he noted that the law requires hospitals to “stabilize both the pregnant woman and her unborn child.”
“The question before the Court is whether EMTALA, according to HHS’s Guidance, mandates physicians to provide abortions when that is the necessary stabilizing treatment for an emergency medical condition. It does not,” wrote Judge Engelhardt. “EMTALA does not mandate medical treatments, let alone abortion care, nor does it preempt [state] law.”
Dr. William Lile, who is board certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and who has delivered thousands of babies, told Liberty Counsel that the goal in treating a pregnant woman is always to preserve the lives of both the mother and her unborn baby when possible.
Dr. Lile stated, “It’s the delivery of the baby that cures the mother’s condition, it’s not the stoppage of baby’s heart and the killing of the baby that helps the mother.”
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act does not preempt state abortion laws, nor does it require the killing of an innocent life. Emergency rooms are only required to stabilize patients, which includes the unborn patient. This so-called ‘guidance’ by the Secretary of Health and Human Services is another lawless act of the Biden administration that will be struck down.”