Illinois Hospitals Must Offer Abortions To Save Mother’s Life: Biden

ILLINOIS — President Joe Biden instructed emergency room doctors in Illinois and elsewhere across the country on Monday that they “must” perform abortions if necessary to save a mother’s life — even if abortions are banned without exception through laws triggered by the Supreme Court decision last month ending the constitutional right to an abortion.

Doctors and hospitals are protected from prosecution by an existing federal law on emergency room treatment guidelines that preempts state laws, Biden told reporters Monday during a news conference, where he expanded on an executive order he signed last week.

Abortion remains legal in Illinois despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court last month. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that abortion will remain legal in the state as long as he is governor, and other lawmakers and politicians have said that Illinois and The City of Chicago will remain a safe haven for women who want to come from out of state to end their pregnancies.

"The extremists on the Supreme Court have made an abhorrent decision, one rooted in partisan games, leaving an indelible stain on our nation," Pritzker said in a news conference after the Supreme Court made abortion illegal on a national level. "Overturning Roe v. Wade directly contradicts the nation's history of expanding rights in the United States.

"It's an attack on freedom and liberty that our Constitution is supposed to guarantee."

In 2020, Illinois saw a 29 percent jump in the number of women who traveled to Illinois to have abortions performed. State health officials announced that about 10,000 women came to the state from other states to have the procedure done, which was up from just more than 7,500 in 2019.

More than a dozen states had trigger laws scheduled to take effect immediately or soon after the court struck down Roe v. Wade—the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to abortion. They and any other laws states might pass are preempted by The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, Biden administration officials said.

It requires doctors at medical facilities to evaluate whether patients seeking treatment are in labor and determine if they have a health emergency or might develop one, and provide treatment accordingly.

“Today, in no uncertain terms, we are reinforcing that we expect providers to continue offering these services, and that federal law preempts state abortion bans when needed for emergency care,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said at the news conference. “Under the law, no matter where you live, women have the right to emergency care — including abortion care.”

Even the most stringent laws allow exceptions when the mother’s life is in danger, but there’s still confusion among physicians regarding how they can treat conditions such as ectopic pregnancy, hypertension, and preeclampsia.

“Providers are mystified right now about what they can and can’t do,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju told Politico, citing reports she has heard of patients being turned away.

In a letter to physicians Monday, Becerra said it is “critical” that physicians and other qualified medical personnel understand they have a “legal duty” to perform or induce an abortion by medication if that is medically necessary to save a mother’s life.

“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,” Becerra said in a letter to health care providers Monday.

“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 preempted.”

Doctors who don’t intervene in such medical crises and the hospitals where they practice could be fined, he said. Hospitals could also lose their Medicare status.

Biden administration officials emphasized policy hasn’t changed, and they were merely reminding doctors and health care providers of their obligations under federal law, The Associated Press reported.

There’s little Biden can do at the federal level to restore abortion rights, which the Supreme Court sent back to the states to decide with its June 24 ruling striking down Roe v. Wade. There isn’t enough support in the Senate to codify abortion rights.