Trump overturns the emergency abortion rule. An emergency rule for abortion access was revoked, putting pregnant patients at greater risk.
On Tuesday, the US government declared that it had overturned a Biden administration rule that mandated hospitals to perform emergency abortions on pregnant women who were at high danger for health problems, even in places where abortion was prohibited or restricted.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the rule no longer represents the administration of Donald Trump.
The reversal follows the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, a historic ruling that granted the right to abortion government protection.
To defend access to medically required abortions after that decision, the Biden administration invoked the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires federally financed institutions to treat or stabilize emergency patients.
Even though EMTALA does not specifically address abortion, every administration since President George W. Bush has construed it to cover emergency abortions where necessary to preserve the patient’s life or health.
The Trump administration’s decision “basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril,” Georgetown University professor and health law expert Lawrence O. Gostin told The New York Times.
The Trump administration said that hospitals are still subject to federal emergency care rules, but it did not specify whether this includes access to abortions.
Consequently, the Trump administration did not explicitly grant hospitals the authority to decline emergency abortions.
Gostin and other experts caution that this unclear policy would deter doctors from providing emergency abortions in states with limitations, putting expectant mothers in danger.
According to Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California-Davis and an expert on the history of the abortion issue in the United States, “uncertainty and confusion” have caused doctors to pause since Roe was overruled, and “the more unwilling physicians are to intervene, the more risk there is in pregnancy.”
She went on to say, “This is not just undoing what the Biden administration did; it’s raising many questions about what hospitals should do moving forward.” Therefore, greater uncertainty is associated with increased risk.
