Appeals Court Unanimously Rejects Joe Biden’s Bid to Turn ER Doctors Into Abortionists
A federal appeals court blocked Joe Biden’s attempt to force Texas emergency rooms and hospitals to commit abortions.
In 2022 the Biden administration told hospitals that the federal government would withhold Medicare funds unless they performed abortions whenever it is the “necessary stabilizing treatment.”
Although the directive claimed to only focus on life-threatening circumstances, the language would have actually broadened abortions when the mother’s physical life is not in danger.
A federal district judge prevented Biden’s abortion mandate from taking effect in August 2022 after Pro-Life doctors and the state of Texas sued. The Biden administration appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and received a bitter loss on Tuesday.
Judges Leslie Southwick, Kurt Engelhardt, and Cory Wilson unanimously ruled that federal law does not require hospitals to commit abortions and the Biden administration cannot hold Medicare funds hostage to force them to do so.
Further, Judge Engelhardt wrote that the policy actually urges physicians to stabilize both the mother and the preborn child:
“We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child especially when EMTALA imposes equal stabilization obligations.”
Immediately after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued the pro-abortion mandate by twisting a federal law signed by Ronald Regan that prevents hospitals from delaying emergency treatment for pregnant mothers or vulnerable patients if they came to the ER—the Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act (EMTALA). Biden’s directive distorted the life-saving provisions of EMTALA by labeling abortion as “stabilizing treatment.”
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The mandate stated:
[If] a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department, including certain labor and delivery departments, 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. And when a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life and health of the pregnant person—or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition—that state law is preempted.
Every Pro-Life state in the nation already allows doctors to intervene in situations when the mother’s life is at risk. Thus, the Biden administration’s pro-abortion directive was unnecessary from the beginning and revealed a larger anti-Life agenda at work.
Tuesday’s ruling against the Biden administration is a resounding victory for the Pro-Life movement. If Biden’s mandate had taken effect, thousands of Texas babies would have suffered cruel deaths through elective abortion.
LifeNews Note: Kim Schwartz is the communications director for Texas Right to Life.
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