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Supreme Court wrestles with whether EMTALA can require abortions in emergencies
Summary
At oral argument in Moyle v. United States, counsel for Idaho urged the Court to read EMTALAas dependent on state licensing and scope-of-practice limits, while the Solicitor General said EMTALA's stabilization duty can require pregnancy termination when it is the only way to prevent serious deterioration; justices probed the tension between federal emergency-care duties and state criminal prohibitions.
Mister Turner, arguing for the State of Idaho, told the Supreme Court that EMTALA— the federal law that requires hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment to emergency patients—cannot be read to override state medical-licensing rules or criminal prohibitions on abortion without a clear congressional statement.
"Nothing in EMTALA requires doctors to ignore the scope of their license and offer medical treatments that violate state law," Turner said, pointing to the Medicare Act's provision that the federal government shall not control the practice of medicine and to EMTALA's text limiting stabilizing care to what staff and facilities "available" at a hospital can provide.
Solicitor General Prelogar, arguing for the United States, countered that EMTALA's promise is "simple, but profound": "No one who comes to an emergency room in need of urgent treatment should be denied necessary stabilizing care." She said that in some tragic pregnancy complications, such as premature rupture of membranes or severe preeclampsia, pregnancy termination may be the only treatment that prevents material deterioration of the patient's…
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