Durbin, Duckworth Join Congressional Democrats In Filing Amicus Brief Urging Ninth Circuit Court To Affirm That EMTALA Requires Hospitals To Provide Emergency Stabilizing Care, Including Abortion Care, Preempting Idaho's Draconian Abortion Ban

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“[T]he 99th Congress passed EMTALA to ensure that every person who visits a Medicare-funded hospital with an ‘emergency medical condition’ is offered stabilizing treatment,” the Members write in their amicus brief. “Congress chose broad language for that mandate, requiring hospitals that participate in the Medicare program to provide ‘such treatment as may be required to stabilize the medical condition.’… That text—untouched by Congress for the past three decades—makes clear that in situations in which a doctor determines that abortion constitutes the ‘[n]ecessary stabilizing treatment’ for a pregnant patient, federal law requires the hospital to offer it. Yet Idaho has made providing that care a felony, in direct contravention of EMTALA’s mandate.

“Respecting the supremacy of federal law is about more than just protecting our system of government; it is about protecting people’s lives. If this Court allows Idaho’s near-total abortion ban to supersede federal law, pregnant patients in Idaho will continue to be denied appropriate medical treatment, placing them at heightened risk for medical complications and severe adverse health outcomes… And health care providers, unwilling to let Idaho’s law override their medical judgment regarding their patients’ best interests, will continue their exile from Idaho, creating maternity-care ‘deserts’ all over the state.

“These are not hypothetical scenarios. Because Idaho’s abortion ban contains no clear exceptions for the ‘emergency medical conditions’ covered by EMTALA, it forces physicians to wait until their patients are on the verge of death before providing abortion care. The result in other states with similar laws has been ‘significant maternal morbidity.

“Federal law does not allow Idaho to endanger the lives of its residents in this way.

“EMTALA requires abortion when necessary to stabilize a patient with an emergency medical condition, Idaho’s near-total abortion ban is preempted to the extent that it prevents doctors from providing that care. This Court should reject Appellants’ novel theory that EMTALA is not entitled to preemptive effect because it was enacted pursuant to Congress’s spending power. Under the Supremacy Clause, all ‘the constitutional laws enacted by congress,’ constitute ‘the supreme Law of the Land,’. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, the principle of federal supremacy applies to laws passed pursuant to Congress’s spending authority no less than it does to laws effectuating other enumerated powers.

“In sum, EMTALA plainly requires hospitals that participate in the Medicare program to provide abortion care when, in a doctor’s medical judgment, it constitutes the ‘[n]ecessary stabilizing treatment’ for a patient’s ‘emergency medical condition.’”

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