Monday July 1, 2024

Dismissing EMTALA Is Not a Win for Reproductive Rights

Earlier this year, PRP filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging it to reinstate a lower court decision that said states cannot bar hospitals from providing abortions to patients in emergency circumstances. 

The case was originally brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, in which it argued that Idaho’s extreme abortion ban was preempted (in part) by the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, commonly known as EMTALA. In other words, federal law required Idaho to permit abortions when the health of the pregnant person was at risk. 

Once the case was taken up by the Supreme Court, PRP filed its amicus brief on behalf of more than 30 current and former local prosecutors and law enforcement officials. The brief argued that prosecutors and law enforcement do not have the medical expertise to evaluate, after the fact, a doctor’s judgment of whether an abortion is absolutely needed. For that reason, EMTALA’s protections are crucial to ensure local prosecutors in Idaho and elsewhere do not prevent patients from receiving necessary and appropriate care.

Last week, the Supreme Court dismissed the case from its docket without deciding the issue. The decision to dismiss the EMTALA case is not a win for reproductive rights. The decision does not provide any clarity on the law, allowing other bad precedent across the country to remain on the books, including in Texas where hundreds of women have been denied necessary emergency care. 

Since Dobbs, thousands of pregnant people have experienced pain, humiliation, and unnecessary risk because doctors have told them they are not close enough to death to receive necessary abortions. The Supreme Court never should have allowed Idaho’s oppressive abortion ban to go fully into effect and now has effectively denied care to thousands more in the near future.

PRP is honored to represent and stand with our partners in local government in arguing that prosecutors have no business telling doctors when an emergency is severe enough to allow for an abortion. We will continue to press that argument as other cases advance through the courts.