Biden Admin’s New HHS Guidance Shoehorns Unfettered Abortion Into Existing Law
By: Margot Cleveland
July 13, 2022
The Biden administration’s “new guidance” to hospitals declaring that abortions must be provided in emergencies seeks not to clarify the law but to provide pro-abortion forces a way to skirt state law while pushing several lies to further the false narrative that overturning Roe v. Wade endangers women’s lives.
In a Monday press release, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that through its Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), it had issued what it called “clarifying guidance on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)” on “abortion services in emergency situations.”
Congress passed the EMTALA in 1986 “to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay,” by imposing “specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services.” Specifically, under the EMTALA, a medical facility that runs an emergency room — which is not all health care facilities — must “provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay.” The law then requires hospitals “to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs,” with a hospital that “is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability” arranging a transfer to another facility.
The press release issued on Monday announced that HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra had written to health care providers in conjunction with the CMA’s issuances of a new memorandum purporting to explain the mandates of EMTALA “in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.”
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/13/biden-admins-new-hhs-guidance-shoehorns-unfettered-abortion-into-existing-law/
