Published January 6, 2024
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Idaho’s law banning abortions except to save the life of the mother to go into effect amid a challenge from the pro-abortion Biden administration.
The High Court also agreed to hear the case in April, which surrounds the Biden administration’s attempt to require emergency room doctors to perform abortions under its new interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA). After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had invented a constitutional right to abortion, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance claiming that EMTALA requires doctors to perform abortions on patients in emergency rooms when it is “the stabilizing treatment necessary” to help in a medical emergency. Under the guidance, hospitals not in compliance could lose funding and the ability to participate in Medicaid.
After the HHS issued its guidance in July of 2022, the Biden administration sued the State of Idaho over its pro-life law, alleging that it is not in compliance with the federal government’s reading of EMTALA. A district court blocked the state’s pro-life law, an order which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed. But within days, the en banc Ninth Circuit vacated its panel’s stay opinion and granted en banc review. The State of Idaho then appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
Idaho is arguing that Congress did not write EMTALA to require emergency room physicians to perform abortions. Instead, the state is arguing that the law’s original intent was to prevent “patient dumping,” when hospitals refuse to treat patients who are unable to pay for emergency services. The law, as written by Congress, explicitly requires hospitals to provide stabilizing care for both pregnant women and their unborn babies in emergencies, regardless of whether they are able to pay for services, and makes no mention of abortion.
Idaho’s emergency application to the High Court reads{
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 arguing that Idaho’s pro-life law — which makes it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion unless it is necessary to prevent her death — is narrower than its reading of EMTALA. It should be noted that Idaho law does not consider removal of a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy as elective abortion.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: Biden blasts Supreme Court decision allowing Idaho to enforce ‘dangerous’ abortion ban
Published January 5, 2024
President Biden on Friday railed against the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Idaho to enact certain provisions in its near-total abortion ban, arguing it is a catalyst for Republican officials to “continue to jeopardize women’s health.”
“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,” Biden said in a statement shared by the White House.
“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,” he added.
His comments come after the high court, in an unsigned order on Friday, granted a request by the state to overrule an injunction issued by a federal appeals court that prevented prosecution of doctors that performed abortions in emergency circumstances that weren’t necessarily life-threatening.
The Defense of Life Act took affect after the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health decision ended the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022. Under the law, abortions are banned in nearly all situations — but there is an exception to prevent the mother’s death.
The Biden administration sued over the ban, claiming it violated laws that protect health care providers that perform lifesaving abortion services in emergencies.
“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,” Biden said Friday in his statement. “This should never happen in America.”
The court is expected to hear oral arguments for the case in April and to make a decision in June. The provisions of the ban will be enforced until then.
In his statement, the president reiterated his administration’s vow to defend reproductive rights and urged Congress to act.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.thehill.com
RELATED: Texas emergency rooms not bound by Biden admin’s guidance on emergency abortion, federal court rules
Federal appeals court sides with Texas, which claimed the Biden administration was overstepping its authority on abortion
Published January 2, 2024
A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the U.S. government does not have the authority to force Texas emergency room doctors to perform abortions if necessary to stabilize emergency room patients.
Reuters reported that the ruling sided with Texas in a lawsuit claiming the Biden administration was overstepping its authority on abortion.
A panel with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on the matter as several lawsuits pertaining to when abortions can be performed in states with abortion ban exceptions for medical emergencies make their way through the courts.
In July 2022, the Biden administration issued guidance saying the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which is a federal law that governs emergency rooms, can require abortion if it is necessary to stabilize a patient with a medical emergency, despite abortion being required in the state where the emergency room is located.
The guidance was issued shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in June 2022.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade turned power over to the states to allow, limit or ban abortion altogether.
The ruling came in the court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which centered on a Mississippi law that banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
A lower court agreed, in August 2022, that there was no mention in EMTALA on what a doctor should do if there is a conflict between the health of a mother and the unborn child. The court also agreed that the Texas abortion ban “fills that void” by including narrow exceptions to save a mother’s life or prevent serious bodily injury in some cases.
Writing for the 5th Circuit Court panel, Judge Kurt Engelhardt said EMTALA includes a requirement to deliver an unborn child, and it was up to doctors to balance the mother’s medical needs, as well as those for the fetus, while complying with state abortion laws.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.foxnews.com
