On Friday, Family Council joined more than 70 other individuals and organizations in an amicus brief filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the cases of United States v. Idaho and United States v. Moyle.
The amicus brief is part of the ongoing lawsuits over the Biden Administration’s effort to turn emergency rooms into abortion facilities under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).
EMTALA is a decades old law signed by President Ronald Reagan. It is designed to ensure people are able to receive emergency care even if they are unable to pay. EMTALA was never intended to require doctors to perform abortions, and nobody has ever interpreted the law that way before.
After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, President Biden issued an executive order urging the Secretary of Health and Human Services to identify ways to use federal authority to expand abortion.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a letter and guidance instructing doctors and hospitals that EMTALA requires them to perform abortions or transfer the woman to another facility for an abortion if they determine the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the mother — even if the abortion would be illegal under state law.
Health exceptions in abortion laws are notoriously vague and can actually permit abortion on demand in many cases. That’s why states like Arkansas limit abortion to situations where the mother’s life is at risk instead of using a broader “health” exception.
However, the Biden Administration’s letter to doctors and hospitals last year specifically says, “And when a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life and health of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted [overridden by the federal government].”
The Biden Administration is trying to force E.R. doctors to perform abortions that might be illegal under state pro-life laws. The amicus brief we joined in the case argues that the federal government simply does not have that authority.
The Biden Administration has no business trying to overrule state pro-life laws or turn emergency rooms into abortion facilities.
Family Council is pleased to join with other pro-life groups in standing for life and pushing back against abortion in our country.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
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