By Kate Scanlon, OSV News
WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The Trump administration announced June 3 that it would revoke Biden-era guidance to the nation’s hospitals directing them to perform abortions in emergency circumstances even in states that banned the procedure.
In 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the court’s previous precedent that held abortion as a constitutional right, the Biden administration issued the directive under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
Supporters of the Biden administration’s directive argued it would shield doctors and medical staff from legal repercussions in states that restricted abortion if they performed an abortion in an emergency, but opponents argued the 1986 EMTALA law obligates doctors and hospitals to attempt to stabilize both mother and unborn child in an emergency.
The Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said they would rescind the directive, adding that “CMS will continue to enforce EMTALA, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.”
“CMS will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions,” the announcement said.
EMTALA was initially enacted to ensure patients’ access to emergency services regardless of their ability to pay. It requires Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to stabilize patients without the means to pay for treatment instead of transferring them to another hospital.
A statement on X from the Pro-Choice Caucus in the U.S. House said, “Every patient in America has the right to lifesaving health care.”
“EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency care, including abortion,” the statement said. “No matter how hard he tries, Donald Trump cannot change that.”
But Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, argued in a statement that the previous guidance “warped EMTALA obligations and created widespread confusion in emergency rooms nationwide.”
“EMTALA is a decades-old statute that was originally designed to protect mother-patients and their unborn children in emergency situations, but the Biden administration manipulated the law’s purpose by issuing guidance that forced emergency room doctors to perform abortions, regardless of their states’ life-affirming laws,” Hyde-Smith said. “Restoring EMTALA to its original purpose brings much-needed clarity to our incredible emergency room doctors across the country and peace of mind to the patients they serve.”
The Justice Department under the Biden administration previously argued Idaho’s abortion restrictions were in conflict with EMTALA, but that suit was dismissed on procedural grounds by the Supreme Court in 2024 without resolving the central question. In March, the Justice Department under the Trump administration said it would drop that suit.
The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred and must be respected from conception to natural death, and as such, opposes direct abortion. The U.S. bishops’ “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” Directive 47, states, “Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.”
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
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