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Cortez Masto, Congressional Democrats File Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Affirm that EMTALA Requires Hospitals to Provide Emergency Stabilizing Care, Including Abortion Care

Letter

Date: March 29, 2024
Location: Washington, D.C.
Issues: Budget, Spending and Taxes Health and Health Care

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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… 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 that it be offered.

These are not hypothetical scenarios. Because Idaho’s abortion ban contains no clear exceptions for the ‘emergency medical conditions’ covered by EMTALA, physicians are forced to wait until their patients are on the verge of death before providing abortion care. Federal law does not allow Idaho to endanger the lives of its residents in this way.”

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