Abortion rights news: emergencies, arrests and indoctrination
2 February 2024
Emergency Abortion Care and Contraception
The Biden Administration recently announced an initiative focused on educating Americans about their right to emergency abortion care and supporting hospitals that provide emergency abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA):
Enacted by Congress in 1986, EMTALA (pronounced em-TAHL-uh) requires hospitals across the country to guarantee all patients a standard of emergency care, regardless of whether they have insurance or can pay. The law, which was passed to address concerns that hospitals were failing to screen, treat or correctly transfer patients, applies to any hospital that receives Medicare funding and has an emergency department — most hospitals in the United States.
Specifically, the law says that if a patient goes to an emergency room with an “emergency medical condition,” hospitals must either provide treatment to stabilize the patient or transfer the patient to a medical facility that can. Hospitals that violate the law can face consequences including fines and exclusion from further Medicare funding.
The law does not mention abortion or name specific treatments for any emergency medical condition. It requires only that hospitals use accepted medical approaches for each patient. But soon after the Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion in June 2022, the Biden administration issued a memorandum saying that EMTALA applies in cases where abortion is necessary to stabilize a patient.
“If a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department 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,” the memorandum said. “When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is pre-empted.” New York Times 18 January 2024.
This initiative is in response to actions by Republican public officials and conservative judges who have indicated that States do NOT have to perform abortions to save the lives of pregnant women and girls. Disputes about this law are currently before the US Supreme Court.
See also:
U.S. Senate discusses problems in states that limit abortion access, 19 January 2024
“Of course they want us dead”, 10 January 2024
How red states are torturing pregnant women, 25 October 2023
Arresting women to protect their fetuses
Jessica Valenti has written about Republican led states that arrest and imprison women and girls, usually but not always pregnant, for possibly endangering their fetuses through drug use. Ironically, the women and girls are often neglected and given inferior medical care.
In 2021, when she was just two months pregnant, Ashley Caswell was arrested on a chemical endangerment charge. Ashley spent the rest of her pregnancy in jail. And during almost the entirety of her high-risk pregnancy, the Etowah County Detention Center showed callous indifference toward Ashley’s medical needs. Jail staff ignored her requests for prenatal care toward the end of her pregnancy, refused to provide her with her prescription medication, and even denied her basic accommodations by forcing her to sleep on a thin mat on a concrete floor.
This mistreatment culminated on October 16, 2021, the day of her delivery. Ashley went into labor, and repeatedly asked to be taken to a hospital, but jail staff ignored her cries for help. Instead, they forced her to endure nearly 12 hours of labor alone with only Tylenol, which she threw up. She had no choice but to deliver her baby unassisted—not even in the jail’s medical unit—but in the jail shower.
Feeling faint after the delivery, she yelled for someone to take her newborn before she passed out on the shower floor in a pool of blood. Instead of immediately helping Ashley, jail staff took pictures with her baby, who was still attached to her via the umbilical cord.
She later learned from a doctor at a hospital that she suffered a life-threatening placental abruption, meaning the placenta separated from the uterus before delivery. This can also deprive a baby of oxygen.
Ashley is currently incarcerated at Tutwiler Prison in Alabama, a separate facility than the jail where she gave birth, on a 15-year sentence for chemical endangerment—even though her baby was born healthy. Source.
Indoctrination of children
Finally, at least 5 Republican led states (Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, West Virginia) are indoctrinating children by forcing public schools to show a biased, anti-abortion video to students:
Last week, I broke news on a new legislative trend: Republicans in multiple states have introduced bills that would force public schools to show students an anti-abortion propaganda video produced by the extremist group Live Action. I reported on legislation in West Virginia, Kentucky, Iowa—and a law that passed in North Dakota last year.
Well, it looks like I missed one! Missouri Republicans are also seeking to force public schools to show the “Baby Olivia” video from Live Action. And, like Kentucky’s legislation, the bill in Missouri would punish schools that don’t want to indoctrinate their students with a video made by one of the most radical anti-abortion groups in the country. House Bill 1576 would allow the state attorney general to sue schools that don’t adhere to the law—but don’t worry, that’s just part of the “state’s interest in safeguarding the health and well-being of its residents.” Abortion, Every Day (1.31.24)
See also Anti-Abortion Propaganda in Schools - The anti-choice movement is pushing out their "education" plan
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EMTALA’s pre-empting capacity would seem to address many of the concerns that Texas physicians have expressed. Yet it’s not been mentioned as an affirmative defense in several of the discussions I’ve heard on reputable news sources; e.g., NPR. Apparently not being hauled into court is - understandably - still a very significant barrier to physicians providing necessary care EVEN in what some would define (but some might not) as emergency situations. In Texas, to be found guilty involves loss of one’s medical license, a six-figure fine, and significant time in prison - too draconian for most physicians to risk, particularly when a Texas state court would probably uphold the state statute regardless of EMTALA, and force the physician into a lengthy and expensive appeal process which might or might not eventually result in acquittal or the case being thrown out.