FL Hospitals Must Offer Abortions To Save Mother’s Life: Biden

FLORIDA — President Joe Biden told emergency room doctors in Florida and elsewhere across the country recently that they “must” perform abortions if necessary to save a mother’s life — even if abortions are banned without exception through laws triggered by the Supreme Court decision last month ending the constitutional right to an abortion.

Doctors and hospitals are protected from prosecution by an existing federal law on emergency room treatment guidelines that preempts state laws, Biden told reporters this month during a news conference, where he expanded on an executive order he signed.

In Florida, a 15-week abortion ban went into effect earlier this month as the legal battle over the new law continues. At the end of June, it was temporarily blocked by a judge, but the law was reinstated after an appeal from the state attorney general a week later.

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the law firm Jenner & Block filed a lawsuit against the state to block the strict abortion law on behalf of several medical facilities that offer abortion services.

The Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality bill was passed by the state legislature earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April. The law, which was scheduled to take effect July 1, bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and threatens to put doctors in jail for providing them after the first trimester. It also doesn't grant exemptions for the victims of rape, incest or human trafficking.

More than a dozen states had trigger laws scheduled to take effect immediately or soon after the court struck down Roe v. Wade—the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to abortion. They and any other laws states might pass are preempted by The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, Biden administration officials said.

It requires doctors at medical facilities to evaluate whether patients seeking treatment are in labor and determine if they have a health emergency or might develop one, and provide treatment accordingly.

“Today, in no uncertain terms, we are reinforcing that we expect providers to continue offering these services, and that federal law preempts state abortion bans when needed for emergency care,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said at the news conference. “Under the law, no matter where you live, women have the right to emergency care — including abortion care.”

Even the most stringent laws allow exceptions when the mother’s life is in danger, but there’s still confusion among physicians regarding how they can treat conditions such as ectopic pregnancy, hypertension and preeclampsia.

“Providers are mystified right now about what they can and can’t do,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju told Politico, citing reports she has heard of patients being turned away.

In a letter to physicians Monday, Becerra said it is “critical” that physicians and other qualified medical personnel understand they have a “legal duty” to perform or induce an abortion by medication if that is medically necessary to save a mother’s life.

“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,” Becerra said in a letter to health care providers Monday.

“When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted.”

Doctors who don’t intervene in such medical crises and the hospitals where they practice could be fined, he said. Hospitals could also lose their Medicare status.

Biden administration officials emphasized policy hasn’t changed, and they were merely reminding doctors and health care providers of their obligations under federal law, The Associated Press reported.

There’s little Biden can do at the federal level to restore abortion rights, which the Supreme Court sent back to the states to decide with its June 24 ruling striking down Roe v. Wade. There isn’t enough support in the Senate to codify abortion rights.