NEW ORLEANS (LifeSiteNews) — Doctors cannot be forced to commit abortions under a law meant to ensure poor people and pregnant women receive medical care, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday.
The three-judge panel ruled against President Joe Biden’s attempt to use the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA) to force states with abortion restrictions to allow for the killing of preborn babies for “emergency” reasons.
EMTALA is intended to ensure hospitals do not force low-income or uninsured patients onto other facilities when they are in need of “stabilizing” medical care, according to the law. It also ensures women in labor can have a baby at any hospital, regardless of her financial situation.
However, the Biden administration sought to reinterpret EMTALA to include a right to abortions in the wake of the June 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade. The administration has regularly created new rules and programs by executive fiat in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, including a Pentagon abortion travel memo and ignoring clear federal law that prohibits the mailing of abortion drugs.
The government’s July 2022 guidance stated:
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. 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.
The federal law “does not address any specific medical procedures or treatments” except “delivery of the unborn child and the placenta,” according to the unanimous ruling.
The ruling upheld a district court decision.
The guidance, the judges notes, “instructs hospitals and physicians to provide abortions in certain cases irrespective of state law with clear legal consequences should a physician or hospital violate [the violation].”
This is not the only legal attempt to stop Texas from protecting preborn babies from abortion. A pending Texas Supreme Court is considering whether further “medical emergency” exceptions should be written into the state’s abortion laws. Texas is considered a “most restrictive” state that bans almost all abortions, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
Medical experts have confirmed that direct abortion is never medically necessary.
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Pro-life legal group praises ruling
Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations in this case, praised the ruling.
“Hospitals—especially emergency rooms—are tasked with preserving life. The 5th Circuit correctly ruled that the federal government has no business transforming them into abortion clinics,” ADF Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Ryan Bangert stated in a news release. “Doctors shouldn’t be forced to break the Hippocratic Oath, and they shouldn’t have to choose between violating their deeply held beliefs or facing stiff financial penalties and being barred from the Medicare program.”
“Emergency room physicians can, and do, treat life-threatening conditions such as ectopic pregnancies,” he stated. “But elective abortion is not life-saving care—it ends the life of the unborn child—and the government has no authority to force doctors to perform these dangerous procedures. We are pleased that the courts are allowing emergency rooms to fulfill their primary function—saving lives.”
The ruling is a departure from a Ninth Circuit ruling that ordered Idaho physicians to kill preborn babies as part of EMTALA. Two related cases are now pending in front of the Supreme Court but a hearing date has not been set.
In its reply, the state notes that the federal government erroneously claimed four court decisions required abortion to be covered under EMTALA.
“Not so. None of the four, pre-Dobbs district court decisions it cites so held,” Idaho argued in its Dec. 1 filing.
The state further argued a point that was also made by Texas and the other pro-life defendants – the emergency care law specifically says does not preempt state law, so states that restrict abortion cannot be forced to cover them under EMTALA.
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