WATCH LIVE | Supreme Court hears arguments in emergency abortion case
Вставка
- Опубліковано 23 кві 2024
- The Supreme Court hears oral arguments over whether the Biden administration has the power to penalize hospitals that fail to provide abortions in emergency situations. The case, Moyle v. United States, centers on a federal law mandating that hospitals that receive federal funds must stabilize or transfer patients in need of emergency care. Biden officials have used the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act - known as EMTALA - to override state abortion restrictions in situations where they say women needed emergency care. Conservatives argue the law does not does not reference abortion specifically and that the White House is wrongly applying the statute.
This case marks the latest frontier for the abortion rights debate in a post-Roe world. The Biden administration began using EMTALA in late 2021 to attempt to protect access to abortion in limited emergency situations, and strengthened that effort after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The White House has lost twice in federal appeals court. If the Supreme Court rules against the Biden administration, it could change how states apply the federal emergency-care law, potentially in situations beyond abortion. Read more: wapo.st/3WveSun. Subscribe to The Washington Post on UA-cam: wapo.st/2QOdcqK
Follow us:
Twitter: / washingtonpost
Instagram: / washingtonpost
Facebook: / washingtonpost
34:50
Wow…Attorney Prelogar is very sharp. Whether she is right or wrong I really like her!
She's usually always right, she's the best.
This could impact emergency medical care for hundreds of millions of Americans, not just women and girls dying because they can’t obtain an emergency abortion to save their own lives. The key factor Idaho is hedging on is whether a doctor may fear criminal prosecution because a prosecutor with no medical training decides the mother must die with or to support the life of a fetus, even if survival of the latter is not possible under whatever circumstances.
EMTALA requirements also cover all emergency medicine, insofar that it broadly requires all emergency departments (even those who do not receive Medicare funding) treat genuine emergency patients until stabilized enough to be transferred safely to a more appropriate facility if the required medical treatment is in their scope of practice. This rule prohibits “turfing” patients, the growing serious crimes of stabilizing and discharging patients who are still unable to care for themselves. This rule is important to keep emergency care available to everyone, not just those who can prepay for it. It also means a heart attack victim can’t be put into a cab and driven to Skid Row and dropped at an overcrowded homeless shelter because the hospital has a brief record showing patient stability.
What Idaho seeks to do (as do several other states) is end EMTALA outright, while still be eligible for federal funds paid for through Medicare. This would mean you have to continue paying for Medicare but hospitals and clinics who benefit from said benefits can refuse care to patients for any reason, including subjective ability to prepay or have great insurance, even when it comes to emergency care for any accident, injury, illness, or other emergency needs. Imagine a world where you cannot safely travel because you can be denied emergency services without maintaining your ability to present insurance coverage proof they will accept or a recent financial statement that makes a hospital administrator smile.
The other issue, which Gorsuch seems especially curious about the Supremacy Clause. I see where he is going here. If the federal government makes a law through the Legislature and it is signed by the Executive (POTUS), the current standard, made quite clear during our Civil War, is that states must at minimum enforce these laws. Gorsuch’s questions suggest that the Supremacy Clause is invalid, that states can make whatever laws and federal laws only apply when there is no state, or even local laws, that say otherwise.
Leave it to conservative justices to bring the dog whistle issue of transgender healthcare into this. I’m trans, my care is never guaranteed, nor does the absence of said care constitute a medical emergency unless I choose it to be through my own actions. Now everyone not wealthy enough to afford private healthcare (or lacks generous healthcare insurance) gets to see what my life has been like for over a half century. I can tell ENTALA and by extension the Supremacy Clause are going to be ruled unconstitutional by who is asking what questions.
Preloger is arguing well and I agree with her interpretation of federal laws, the Constitution, and both ENTALA and the Supremacy Clause. But the questions she is getting show me that certain more conservative justices have already made up their minds. Dragging transgender care into their questioning is a strictly political move on their part having no relationship to the legal matter before them. They are also suggesting ways Congress and a willing POTUS can end ENTALA and the Supremacy Clause.
We live in interesting times, where maternal and infant mortality rates are about to skyrocket. Unless you are wealthy enough to evade such laws, the new laws don’t apply to them if they choose to circumvent them.
I can't imagine that the supreme court would really rule in favor of Idaho. If they do, then there's really no hope for SCOTUS anymore.
How is this even happening??
I was born and was raised in Idaho and I can tell you this is all supported by religious groups !
Completely ridiculous!
47mins How dumb for the Justice to think anyone supports the mother dying in order to avoid killing the child. That kills the child too!
What a dishonest argument.
That is not the argument clearly. Justice Sotomayor is stating that doctors in states like Florida are not giving medically necessary abortions because a mother’s condition is not critical enough and delaying care until it is indisputable in order to protect themselves and their license from potential state prosecution. And this is to the detriment of the woman’s health