Federal law on emergency treatment guidelines preempts state laws in jurisdictions that now ban the procedure without any exceptions.
The Department of Health and Human Services cited requirements on medical facilities in the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The law requires medical facilities to determine whether a person seeking treatment may be in labor or whether they face an emergency health situation — or one that could develop into an emergency — and to provide treatment.
“If a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide that treatment,” the agency’s guidance states.
“Under federal law, providers in emergency situations are required to provide stabilizing care to someone with an emergency medical condition, including abortion care if necessary, regardless of the state where they live,” said Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. “CMS will do everything within our authority to ensure that patients get the care they need.
Mississippi’s trigger law, which went into effect Thursday, says abortion will be legal only if the woman’s life is in danger or if a pregnancy is caused by a rape reported to law enforcement. It does not have an exception for pregnancies caused by incest.When asked about the Biden administration’s new guidance, Michelle Williams, chief of staff to Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, pointed to the existing exception in Mississippi’s abortion law.
“Mississippi’s law already makes an exception for preservation of the mother’s life,” Williams told The Associated Press on Monday. “The Biden Administration’s statement of existing law today is about nothing more than maintaining the false narrative that women’s lives are in danger in order to appease his base.”
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