The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act became law in 1986. It applies to all hospitals that take Medicare, and it mandates that those hospitals treat any patients seeking emergency help regardless of their ability to pay and provide enough care to stabilize their condition.
The mandated care includes abortions, if deemed medically necessary, a point Joe Biden made after SCOTUS handed down the Dobbs decision. On the other hand, Texas exists. So Houston, we have a problem.
A group of anti-choice doctors in Texas sued on the grounds that the federal government is overreaching its powers by requiring that physicians perform abortions under EMTALA. I mean, they have the right to let pregnant women die from complications related to their fetii, the primacy of federal law be damned, right? I’m old enough to remember when this was taught in school as nullification. And that it’s unconstitutional. But no red-blooded GOP-appointed federal circuit judge is going to let anything as petty as constitutionality get in the way of their quest, and the 5th Circuit sided with Texas.
It’s kind of ironic because Alito wrote in Dobbs that the court was deciding the issue once and for all and instead Dobb’s aftermath is that there is a steady stream of cases headed to SCOTUS for decisions.
This issue of whether state laws trump federal laws if states have a sincerely held desire to punish those harlots who get pregnant is already kind of before SCOTUS via a similar case filed by the federal government against Idaho. The 9th Circuit agreed in October to reconsider an appeals case that seeks to shield emergency room doctors from prosecution under Idaho’s law if they provide an abortion as part of stabilizing care, and has put Idaho’s abortion ban on hold. Idaho has asked SCOTUS to allow the state’s abortion ban to stay in place.
Dobbs has opened quite the Pandora’s box of issues for the Supreme Court, huh? Johnny knows what I’m talking about.
