Cool news out of the women-loving Trump administration: Hospitals are no longer required to perform emergency abortions in order to save a pregnant person’s life. Yes, from the guy who brought us “I respect women, I love women, I cherish women” comes Eh, they can die.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that it was rescinding 2022 guidance issued by the Biden administration that directed hospitals to comply with federal law and provide emergency care for all patients, even if that emergency care meant terminating a pregnancy in a state with an abortion ban. In its statement, the agency said the guidance did not “reflect the policy of this administration.” At the same time, CMS claimed that it would continue to enforce the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, a 1986 law that requires federally funded hospitals to treat or transfer patients in need of emergency care; it snarkily added that it would “work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”
In fact, the Biden-era guidance was extremely clear: Hospitals in all states were required to attempt to save people’s lives, even if those people were pregnant (what a concept). Probably quite purposely, the statement’s language makes it extremely unclear what a physician in a state with an abortion ban can do, and what could result in their losing their license or potentially going to prison. “We’ve already seen since the overturn of Roe that uncertainty and confusion tends to mean physicians are unwilling to intervene, and the more unwilling physicians are to intervene, the more risk there is in pregnancy,” Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California-Davis, told The New York Times. “This is not just withdrawing what the Biden administration did. It’s creating a lot of unanswered questions about what hospitals are supposed to do going forward. So more confusion means more risk.” Lawrence O. Gostin, a Georgetown University health law expert, told the Times that it’s more than obvious what the new guidance is trying to do, regardless of the spin: “It basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril.”
At least three women in Texas died between 2021 and 2023 after being denied abortion care. Meanwhile, a woman in Georgia who was declared brain-dead in February is being kept on life support because she was about nine weeks pregnant when she was admitted to an Atlanta hospital.
Donald Trump has described himself as the “most pro-life president ever.”Marjorie Taylor Greene has a message for fellow Republicans who also missed Lawmaking 101
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