Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Supreme Court To Hear Momentous Case On Abortion Care In Emergencies
Slate: The Absurd Case About Whether Doctors Can Let You Bleed Out In The ER Is Reaching SCOTUS
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a dispute over whether states can decline to abide by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. EMTALA is a federal law requiring stabilizing care for all ER patients, including abortion care, even if it conflicts with a state’s own stricter abortion rules. Moyle v. United States consolidates two cases—Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States. (Lithwick, 4/22)
Mother Jones: With This Week’s Abortion Case, Supreme Court Faces Grim Reality Of Overturning Roe
Reports make clear that doctors and hospitals are withholding medically-necessary abortions in violation of patients’ right to stabilizing treatment under EMTALA. Under Idaho’s ban, women are being put on hospital planes and flown out of state. If bad weather makes that impossible, they have to be driven. “Patients suffer” in these transfers, which, as attorneys for St. Luke’s, Idaho’s largest hospital chain, wrote in siding with the Biden administration, “cause not only pain and suffering, but also more permanent effects such as organ failure, loss of reproductive organs, and other forms of disability.” Such transfers are common. In a 12-day period last October, St. Luke’s transported four patients out of state for emergency abortions, according to the Idaho Capital Sun. If before EMTALA hospitals were dumping patients at nearby hospitals on gurneys, now they are dumped via airlift. (Levy, 4/22)
CNN: Reagan-Era Emergency Health Care Law Is The Next Abortion Flashpoint At The Supreme Court
The Justice Department maintains that federal law requires hospitals to offer abortions if necessary to stabilize the health of emergency room patients, even in states like Idaho that ban that procedure. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Attorney General Merrick Garland characterized the case as part of the department’s promise to “work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom” in the wake of Roe’s reversal. The lawsuit has proceeded somewhat under the radar and has been overshadowed by the other blockbuster abortion case at the Supreme Court this year, concerning the federal regulations for abortion pills. Yet, the Idaho case could yield the most significant ruling from the court on abortion since the 2022 Roe reversal and one that could further elevate an issue Democrats want front and center in the 2024 election this November. (Sneed, 4/20)
Roll Call: Supreme Court To Hear Oral Arguments On Abortion And Trump
The cases are emblematic of a term in which the conservative-controlled court is poised to broaden its impact on American law and politics in ways that could reverberate for years — as well as the remaining months before this fall’s presidential election. (Macagnone, 4/22)
Also —
Stat: After Dobbs Decision, Hospitals Reluctant To Discuss Maternal Care
The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has transformed not just abortion access but maternal health care across the United States, causing physicians in states with restrictive laws to shift treatment of conditions including ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage. The full scale of the impact, though, has been obscured in a polarized political climate where physicians are often afraid to speak out, or are blocked by their hospitals from talking about their experiences post-Dobbs. (Goldhill, 4/22)
