WASHINGTON (AP) – The Biden The administration told emergency room doctors they must perform emergency abortions when necessary to save a pregnant woman’s health, after last week Supreme Court ruling which failed to resolve a legal dispute over whether state abortion bans nullify a federal law that requires hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment.
In a letter sent Tuesday to physician and hospital associations, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Director of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure reminded hospitals of their legal duty to offer stabilizing treatment, which could include abortions. A copy of the letter was obtained by the Associated Press.
“No pregnant woman or her family should even begin to worry that they will be denied the treatment they need to stabilize their emergency medical condition in the emergency room,” the letter said.
He continued: “And yet, we hear story after story describing the experiences of pregnant women who presented to hospital emergency departments with emergency medical conditions and were turned away because medical providers were unsure what treatment they were authorized to receive. to provide.”
CMS will also resume investigations into complaints against emergency rooms in Idaho, after the Supreme Court ruled last week that hospitals should be allowed to perform emergency abortions for now, despite the state’s abortion ban.
But enforcement in Texas, the most populous state in the country and with a Strict six-week abortion banwill still be on hold due to a lower court ruling.
The letter is the Biden administration’s latest attempt to raise awareness about a 40-year-old federal law this requires almost all emergency rooms – all of which receive Medicare dollars – to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in a medical emergency. When hospitals turn away patients or refuse to provide such care, they are subject to federal investigations, heavy fines, and loss of Medicare funding.
The emergency room is the latest place where the White House has argued it can federally require rare emergency abortions to be performed despite strict state abortion bans. After Roe v. Wade was voided in 2022and U.S. women lost their constitutional right to abortion, HHS quickly sent cards to doctors, saying that they were required to perform abortions in emergency medical situations when they were necessary to keep a woman medically stable.
An AP investigation found that complaints about pregnant women turned away from emergency rooms increased in 2021 after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe, raising concerns about emergency pregnancy care in states that have enacted strict measures abortion laws.
In Idaho, enforcement of federal law in emergency abortion cases has been suspended since January, when the state’s strict abortion ban took effect. Idaho state law threatens doctors with prison sentences if they perform an abortion, with the exception only if a pregnant woman’s life, not her health, is at risk.
The Biden administration has argued that this conflicts with a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA. Approximately 50,000 women every year develop serious pregnancy complications, such as blood loss, sepsis or organ loss. Some of these women may go to the emergency room and in more serious cases, where the fetus is unlikely to be viable, doctors may recommend terminating the pregnancy.
For example, if a woman’s water breaks during the second trimester, a condition known as premature rupture of membranes, the fetus may not be viable, and continuing the pregnancy means the patient may be at risk of developing sepsis. an infection that can be deadly. .
Texas is also suing the Biden administration over its guidance on the law. The Justice Department appealed a lower court ruling that said the law could be applied to the Supreme Court, which could decide to take up the case later this year.
HHS has also sought in recent months to make it easier for any patients rejected or not transferred properly to file complaints against hospitals. Earlier this year, CMS launched a new web page that allows anyone to submit a complaint in a simple three-step process.
The complaint page will also be available in Spanish starting today.
“We will continue to build on our recent actions to educate the public about their rights to emergency medical care and to help support the efforts of hospitals and healthcare professionals to meet their obligations under EMTALA,” the letter said.
