On October 22, Physicians for Reproductive Health, represented by Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, filed an amicus brief to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit detailing how abortion restrictions, including Idaho’s total abortion ban, conflict with physicians’ responsibilities under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).
PRH President & CEO and ob/gyn in Washington DC Dr. Jamila Perritt along with six other PRH physician advocates from across the country provided their firsthand perspectives.
“Both courts and the medical community repeatedly have recognized that situations arise where ‘stabilizing treatment’ under EMTALA requires termination of a pregnancy. Under EMTALA, hospitals ‘must provide medical care to stabilize all emergency patients,’ including patients requiring abortion care.
“Yet emergency circumstances under EMTALA do not always meet the benchmark set by the Idaho Total Abortion Ban and similar laws, which allow abortion care only if, in that moment, it is ‘necessary to prevent the death’ of the pregnant patient. Indeed, the State of Idaho admits that if a pregnant patient’s condition could, absent an abortion, result in the loss of an organ or serious medical complications, but not the loss of life, ‘abortions in that case aren’t allowed.’ As demonstrated by the accounts of PRH physicians, such circumstances are not merely hypothetical. Even when medical conditions and complications are not considered imminently life-threatening, they can have serious consequences to patients’ wellbeing and can become life-threatening if stabilizing intervention is withheld.
Even when medical conditions and complications are not considered imminently life-threatening, they can have serious consequences to patients’ wellbeing and can become life-threatening if stabilizing intervention is withheld.
“Physicians have always understood EMTALA to require the provision of abortion care when it is necessary stabilizing treatment. The proliferation of state laws criminalizing abortion, however, has created rampant confusion and undue stress for practicing physicians both in Idaho and in states with similar statutes about the physician’s ability to provide this essential stabilizing care when it is not ‘life-saving.’ Rather than simply exercising their medical judgment in emergency situations, physicians are now forced to make a series of challenging—and potentially criminal or career-ending—decisions about how to treat pregnant patients within the confines of the law and their competing moral, professional, and federal medical obligations.
“According to Dr. Jamila Perritt, the President and CEO of PRH, the question is “no longer ‘how should we treat the patient’s medical condition?’ but rather ‘is this person close enough to death to even qualify for treatment?’” Dr. Perritt explains, “[w]e are hearing from physicians over and over that before they act they are forced to ask the question ‘Is this person sick enough?’” Such a position is unworkable in practice.”