WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) joined Senate colleagues in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit defending life-saving reproductive care in two consolidated cases that are threatening the federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency medical treatment, sometimes including abortion care. The anti-choice extremists litigating the two cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, are challenging the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law that requires hospitals to provide necessary “stabilizing treatment” to patients experiencing medical emergencies. In the brief, the lawmakers ask the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reaffirm its judgment that EMTALA supersedes Idaho’s abortion ban in life-threatening situations, requiring Medicare-participating hospitals to provide abortion as an emergency medical treatment when necessary.
“[T]he 99th Congress passed EMTALA to ensure that every person who visits a Medicare-funded hospital with an ‘emergency medical condition’ is offered stabilizing treatment,” wrote the Senators. “That text—untouched by Congress for the past three decades—makes clear that in situations in which a doctor determines that abortion constitutes the ‘[n]ecessary stabilizing treatment’ for a pregnant patient, federal law requires the hospital to offer it.”
“If this Court allows Idaho’s near-total abortion ban to supersede federal law, pregnant patients in Idaho will continue to be denied appropriate medical treatment, placing them at heightened risk for medical complications and severe adverse health outcomes,” they continued. “Federal law does not allow Idaho to endanger the lives of its residents in this way.”
Senator Rosen has been fighting against anti-choice efforts to restrict reproductive freedoms. Earlier this year, she voted to protect access to IVF and joined legislation to protect IVF treatments in federal law. Senator Rosen helped introduce the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act to protect doctors and other health care professionals from being prosecuted for providing reproductive care to their patients. She also voted to protect women’s constitutional right to access birth control.
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