A White House letter sent to medical professionals following last week’s Supreme Court ruling said the Biden administration is telling doctors that pregnant women should be able to access emergency abortions if they need them to protect their health.
In a letter to doctor and hospital groups, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Director Chiquita Brooks LaSure said hospitals have a legal obligation to provide stabilizing care, including abortions, according to the Associated Press.
“Pregnant women and their families should not have to worry that they may not receive the care they need to stabilize their urgent medical condition at an emergency room,” the letter said.
Supreme Court to hear arguments in Biden lawsuit that ‘violates states’ rights’ on abortion
The Biden administration is instructing emergency room doctors that they must perform emergency abortions when necessary to protect the health of pregnant women, following last week’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling. (AP Photo/David J. Phillips)
“However, story after story has emerged of pregnant women visiting hospital emergency departments with urgent medical issues only to be refused care because health care providers were unsure of how to treat them,” the report continued.
The Supreme Court ruled last week that Idaho doctors should be allowed to perform emergency abortions to comply with a federal law that requires emergency rooms to provide “stabilizing care” to seriously ill patients, despite the state’s near-total abortion ban.
The consolidated cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, attracted national attention following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The ruling did not resolve a legal dispute over whether state abortion bans supersede federal laws that require hospitals to provide stabilizing care.
Supreme Court rules in abortion pill case, finding groups lack authority to challenge FDA approval
Abortion rights activists march to the US Supreme Court on June 24, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
The law cited by the Biden administration requires nearly all emergency rooms that receive Medicare funding to provide stabilization treatment to patients in medical emergencies, and hospitals that turn patients away could face federal investigations, heavy fines and loss of Medicare funding.
Idaho has been halting enforcement of the federal law in emergency abortion cases since January, when the state’s strict abortion ban went into effect. The state’s new defense of life law criminalizes abortion by any medical professional except in cases of rape, incest or endangering the life of the mother.
Doctors who perform abortions can face prison time, with the only exception being in cases where the life, rather than the health, of the pregnant woman is at risk.
The Biden administration argued that the state law conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law that requires health care providers to provide patients with “stabilizing treatment,” including abortions, if it’s necessary to treat an emergency medical condition, even if it might conflict with state abortion restrictions.
Supreme Court Justices pose for an official photograph at the Supreme Court. (Olivier D’Uglier/AFP via Getty Images)
Click here to get the FOX News app
The state argued that “interpreting EMTALA as a federal mandate for abortion raises significant questions under primary issue doctrines affecting both Congress and this Court.” Supporters of state abortion restrictions have cited the Dobbs decision, which allows states to regulate abortion access, and accused the Biden administration of “subverting states’ rights.”
Fox News Digital’s Brianna Herlihy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
