Biden admin: Docs must offer abortion if mom's life at risk

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Monday told hospitals that they “must” provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk, saying federal law on emergency treatment guidelines preempts state laws in jurisdictions that now ban the procedure without any exceptions following the Supreme Court's decision to end a constitutional right to abortion.

The Department of Health and Human Services cited requirements on medical facilities in the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The law requires medical facilities to determine whether a person seeking treatment may be in labor or whether they face an emergency health situation — or one that could develop into an emergency — and to provide treatment.

“If a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide that treatment,” the agency's guidance states. “When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted.”

The department said emergency conditions include “ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-admin-docs-must-offer-abortion-if-moms-life-at-risk/ar-AAZsKdE

[Ilsa]

1. It helps, some.

But we won't have equality as long as government monitors and regulates our reproductive systems.

[Irish_Dem]

2. It is still an unequal and bad situation.

Providers are still going to be apprehensive and uncertain. Some staff will refuse to assist in the care.

And when you have to get the hospital legal department to give you permission to handle an emergency, this is not good care.

This is substandard care to females.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. "Mother" is a loaded term here too, ugh.

[musette_sf]

4. Is this going to apply to Catholic hospitals?

When There's a Heartbeat: Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Hospitals

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636458/

I'll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we're going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I'm on call when she gets septic, and she's septic to the point that I'm pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she's 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn't let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let's go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can't do this. I can't put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That's why I left.

[Novara]

5. It's called emergency care

There should be no question: save the life that is present NOW. Duh.

[Diamond_Dog]

6. So now Biden has to remind hospitals that according to federal emergency care law,

hospitals are required to save a woman’s life.

Why does it still feel like we’re being treated like breeding cattle?