The Idaho law banning abortions, except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk, has been allowed to take effect by the Supreme Court. This decision comes despite opposition from the pro-abortion Biden administration, which has challenged the law. The Supreme Court has also agreed to hear the case in April, which revolves around the Biden administration’s attempt to mandate emergency room doctors to perform abortions under a new interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA).
Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance stating that EMTALA requires doctors to perform abortions in emergency rooms when it is deemed necessary for stabilizing treatment during a medical emergency. Hospitals that do not comply with this guidance risk losing funding and the ability to participate in Medicaid.
In response to the HHS guidance issued in July 2022, the Biden administration filed a lawsuit against the State of Idaho, arguing that its pro-life law does not align with the federal government’s interpretation of EMTALA. Initially, a district court blocked the state’s law, but this decision was stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. However, the en banc Ninth Circuit later vacated the stay opinion and granted en banc review. Subsequently, the State of Idaho appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.
Idaho contends that Congress did not intend for EMTALA to mandate emergency room physicians to perform abortions. Instead, the state argues that the law was originally designed to prevent “patient dumping,” where hospitals refuse to treat patients who cannot afford emergency services. According to the law as written by Congress, hospitals are explicitly required to provide stabilizing care for both pregnant women and their unborn babies during emergencies, regardless of their ability to pay, without any mention of abortion.
The emergency application states:
“EMTALA does not even mention abortion. That statutory silence alone is powerful evidence that Congress did not intend to preempt state abortion laws, particularly given EMTALA’s savings clause. It would be odd indeed if Congress had tucked authority to negate the enforcement of state abortion laws in a relatively obscure provision of the Medicare Act.
“And of course, President Reagan and Congress enacted no such thing in 1986. Rather, the United States seeks to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate abortion, claiming for itself a power to address one of the most contentious social, political, and cultural decisions without a word to that effect from Congress.”
The United States is contending that Idaho’s pro-life legislation, which criminalizes the act of performing an abortion by a doctor unless it is essential to prevent the woman’s death, has a more limited scope compared to its interpretation of EMTALA. It is important to highlight that under Idaho law, the removal of a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy is not classified as an elective abortion.
“That exception is narrower than EMTALA, which by its terms protects patients not only from imminent death but also from emergencies that seriously threaten their health,” the reply brief reads. “Idaho law thus criminalizes care required by federal law: Under Section 18-622, an emergency room physician who concludes that a pregnant woman needs an abortion to stabilize a condition that would otherwise threaten serious and irreversible harm may not provide the necessary care unless and until the patient’s condition deteriorates to the point where an abortion is needed to save her life.”
The decision of the Supreme Court to consider the case comes shortly after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit prohibited the HHS EMTALA guidance in Texas.
“EMTALA does not mandate any specific type of medical treatment, let alone abortion,” Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for a three-judge panel. “We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child especially when EMTALA imposes equal stabilization obligations.”
“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. We therefore decline to expand the scope of EMTALA,” he wrote.
In a statement released on Friday, the White House under President Joe Biden expressed its disapproval of the Supreme Court’s ruling to permit the implementation of Idaho’s abortion law.
Biden said:
“Today’s Supreme Court order allows Idaho’s extreme abortion ban to go back into effect and denies women critical emergency abortion care required by federal law. The overturning of Roe v. Wade has enabled Republican elected officials to pursue dangerous abortion bans like this one that continue to jeopardize women’s health, force them to travel out of state for care, and make it harder for doctors to provide care, including in an emergency. These bans are also forcing doctors to leave Idaho and other states because of laws that interfere with their ability to care for their patients. This should never happen in America.
“The Vice President and I believe that health care decisions should be made by women and their doctors, not politicians. We will continue to defend a woman’s ability to access emergency care under federal law. As this case continues, the stakes could not be higher for women across America. Congress must immediately restore the protections of Roe v. Wade so that women in every state can access the health care they need.”
