The Biden Admin Tried to Force Emergency Room Doctors to Kill Unborn Babies Against Their Conscience AND the Law

After the U.S. Supreme Court overruled abortion cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, angry leftists called on President Joe Biden to make sure states allowed women to continue killing their unborn babies. He obliged by signing an executive order on “securing access” to abortions.

The executive order “clarified” medical facilities’ obligation “under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, 42 U.S.C. 1395dd, to provide to patients presenting at an emergency department with an emergency medical condition stabilizing care, including an abortion, if that care is necessary to stabilize their emergency medical condition…”

The state of Texas sued the Biden administration over the executive order. The court had to consider whether a 1986 federal law “ensuring emergency medical care for the poor and uninsured, known as EMTALA” requires doctors to provide abortions when killing unborn babies violates state law.

The court said it does not.

“Texas law already overlaps with EMTALA to a significant degree, allowing abortions in life-threatening conditions and for the removal of an ectopic or miscarried pregnancy,” the court contended (PDF). “But in Dobbs‘s wake and in an attempt to resolve any potential conflict with state law, the Department of Health and Human Services issued Guidance purporting to remind providers of their existing EMTALA obligations to provide abortions regardless of state law. That Guidance goes well beyond EMTALA’s text, which protects both mothers and unborn children, is silent as to abortion, and preempts state law only when the two directly conflict. Since the statute is silent on the question, the Guidance cannot answer how doctors should weigh risks to both a mother and her unborn child. Nor can it, in doing so, create a conflict with state law where one does not exist. The Guidance was thus unauthorized.”

SBA Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser commended the judge. “The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act protects mothers and babies, requiring stabilization for both patients, and every pro-life state law allows pregnant women to receive critical, life-saving medical care during an emergency.”

Abortion advocates have made wild claims after the high court overturned Roe. Some said doctors would no longer treat women with ectopic pregnancies or having miscarriages.

Christian legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represents pro-life medical associations that are parties in the case.

“Emergency room physicians can, and do, treat ectopic pregnancies and other life-threatening conditions,” ADF Senior Counsel Denise Harle said. “Elective abortion is not life-saving care—it ends the life of the unborn—and the government can’t force doctors to perform procedures that violate their conscience and religious beliefs.”

Photo credit: American Life League (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved

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