Emergency rooms have been turning away pregnant women after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, despite federal mandates requiring a standard for their care.
Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat or stabilize patients who are actively in labor and transfer them to another facility if they're unable to provide that standard of care, and medical facilities that accept Medicare must comply with that law – although the Supreme Court will hear arguments next week that could weaken those protections, reported the Associated Press.
“No woman should be denied the care she needs,” said Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council. “All patients, including women who are experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies, should have access to emergency medical care required under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.”
Complaints about hospitals turning away pregnant patients spiked in 2022, shortly after the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned abortion rights, including the case of a woman who miscarried in the restroom of Sacred Heart Emergency Center in Houston, Texas, as her husband called 911 for help because staffers there refused to help.
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“She is bleeding a lot and had a miscarriage,” the husband told first responders in his call, which was translated from Spanish in federal documents. “I’m here at the hospital but they told us they can’t help us because we are not their client.”
Emergency crews arrived 20 minutes later and took the woman to another hospital, and 911 transcripts show they were confused by Sacred Heart staffers refusing to help the woman or answer questions about the gestational age of the fetus.
“No, we can’t tell you, she is not our patient," a staffer said, according to first responders. "That’s why you are here.”
Staffers at Person Memorial Hospital in Roxboro, North Carolina, told a pregnant woman who complained of stomach pain that they were unable to provide her with an ultrasound and failed to tell her that leaving without being stabilized was risky, and she gave birth on the way to a hospital that was 45 minutes away to a baby who did not survive.
“They are so scared of a pregnant patient, that the emergency medicine staff won’t even look," Sara Rosenbaum, a George Washington University health law and policy professor. "They just want these people gone."
President Joe Biden has vowed to enforce the federal law requiring hospitals that receive Medicare funds to provide stabilizing care, including abortions, and his administration has sued Idaho over its abortion ban, even in the case of medical emergencies, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case starting Wednesday.
The court will also hear a challenge in the coming months to the Food and Drug Administration’s rules for obtaining the abortion medication mifepristone.
"Doctors, not politicians, should determine what constitutes emergency care," said Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services.