The Biden administration has told hospitals they “must” offer abortion services when a mother’s life is at stake.
According to the government, federal law surrounding emergency care guidelines overrides state laws in jurisdictions that have banned abortions without exception in light of the Supreme Court’s quashing of Roe v Wade.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) listed requirements for medical facilities in the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). It requires medical facilities to determine if a patient is in labor, undergoing or developing a health emergency. In those cases, the law calls on doctors to treat.
If a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting to an emergency department has a medical emergency as defined by EMTALA and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment needed to resolve that condition, the physician treatment,” the HHS stated in its guidance.
“If a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or makes the exception stricter than EMTALA’s definition of medical emergency — that state law is null and void.”
Guidance comes three days after president Joe Biden signed executive order to protect access to abortion and reproductive health services.
Biden’s order on Friday, two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, ordered the HHS and the Justice Department to scale back efforts to deter women from using federally approved abortion medications and to other states. to travel for the procedure.
The HHS said on Monday that emergencies include “ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss or emerging hypertensive conditions, such as preeclampsia with severe features.”
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in a letter wrote to health care providers: “It is critical that health care providers know that the professional and legal duty of a physician or other qualified medical personnel to provide stabilizing medical treatment to a patient presenting to the emergency department and receiving a medical state of emergency is found to be in direct conflict with any law or state mandate that would otherwise prohibit such treatment.”
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