{"id":1588212,"date":"2022-08-04T08:03:13","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T12:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1588212"},"modified":"2022-08-04T08:03:41","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T12:03:41","slug":"killing-babies-isnt-stabilizing-treatment-but-the-lying-biden-administration-already-knows-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/killing-babies-isnt-stabilizing-treatment-but-the-lying-biden-administration-already-knows-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Killing Babies Isn\u2019t \u2018Stabilizing Treatment,\u2019 But The Lying Biden Administration Already Knows That"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fkilling-babies-isnt-stabilizing-treatment-but-the-lying-biden-administration-already-knows-that%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1588212&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Treating pregnant women\u2019s \u201cemergency medical conditions\u201d never requires ER doctors to perform illegal abortions. The Biden administration\u2019s claims to the contrary represent a dishonest attempt to reinject federal courts into state abortion policy following the Supreme Court\u2019s reversal of <em>Roe v. Wade <\/em>and <em>Planned Parenthood v. Casey.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Less than a week after pro-life medical associations sued the Biden administration in a federal court in Texas over its attempt to use the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) to force emergency room doctors to perform abortions in violation of state law, Biden\u2019s Department of Justice filed suit against Idaho claiming that state\u2019s abortion ban violates the EMTALA.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The EMTALA, which Congress passed in 1986, bans \u201cpatient dumping,\u201d wherein hospital emergency rooms turn patients away because of an inability to pay. Under the EMTALA, hospitals that receive Medicare funding and operate emergency rooms must \u201cprovide a medical screening examination\u201d \u201cregardless of an individual\u2019s ability to pay.\u201d The law then requires hospitals \u201cto provide stabilizing treatment for patients\u201d with an \u201cemergency medical condition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In mid-July, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra issued a statement announcing that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had issued a new memorandum to Medicare service providers purporting to explain the mandates of EMTALA \u201cin light of the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In its supposed explanatory memorandum, the CMS claimed that an abortion may be the \u201cstabilizing treatment\u201d required under the EMTALA when a pregnant woman presents at an emergency department with a potential \u201cemergency medical condition,\u201d such as an \u201cectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features.\u201d The Biden administration then advised that if \u201ca state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant [woman] \u2014 or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA\u2019s emergency medical condition definition \u2014 that state law is preempted,\u201d meaning trumped by federal law.<\/p>\n<p>Two days after the release of Becerra\u2019s statement and the CMS memorandum, Texas <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasattorneygeneral.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/executive-management\/20220714_1-0_Original%2520Complaint%2520Biden%2520Admin.pdf\">sued<\/a> the Biden administration in a federal court, challenging the memorandum on numerous grounds, including that it exceeded the CMS\u2019s authority and violated the Spending Clause of the Constitution and the 10th Amendment. Last Thursday, Texas filed an amendment complaint that added as plaintiffs the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians &#038; Gynecologists (AAPLOG) and the Christian Medical &#038; Dental Associations. The amendment complaint alleges similar legal theories but added several significant allegations.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, the amendment complaint highlights portions of the CMS memorandum that suggest ER physicians will violate the EMTALA if they fail to provide a surgical abortion in response to women presenting with an incomplete medical abortion, even in cases \u201cwhere the unborn child is still living and may still be preserved.\u201d The CMS\u2019s guidance under this scenario would, in effect, require ER doctors to provide illegal elective abortions, the amended complaint alleges. Further, as stressed in the amended complaint, the \u201cAAPLOG has issued several position statements and medical practice bulletins on situations threatening the life of the mother and the need to not conflate legitimate treatments provided in such circumstances with abortion provided in broader circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the amended complaint filed in Texas does not detail those circumstances, shortly after the CMS issued its memorandum, The Federalist <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/07\/13\/biden-admins-new-hhs-guidance-shoehorns-unfettered-abortion-into-existing-law\/\">excerpted<\/a> from those position statements, medical practice bulletins, and other pro-life obstetrician and gynecologist resources, explaining that \u201cmedical treatment of a pregnant mother and her child seeks to protect the life and health of both patients, where possible,\u201d while \u201cthe purpose of abortion is to cause the death of one of the patients, namely the unborn child.\u201d \u201cAn abortion procedure is not the same thing as treatment for an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage management,\u201d the guidance makes clear, with the treatment for \u201can ectopic pregnancy, which is a pregnancy outside of the uterus,\u201d being vastly different than an elective abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, \u201cwhile the treatments for miscarriage or pregnancy loss, may sometimes \u2018be the same as those for abortion (e.g., dilation and suction or misoprostol or, uncommonly, a combination of mifepristone\/misoprostol), the purpose is vastly different, i.e., removing an already dead fetus versus causing the death of a fetus.\u2019\u201d Likewise, treating \u201cpreeclampsia with severe features,\u201d another example provided to justify an abortion, rarely occurs prior to viability, allowing the ER physician to treat the mother\u2019s emergency medical condition while attempting to also save the unborn baby\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>Abortion is also not medically necessary to treat placenta previa, which \u201cis a condition in which the placenta covers the cervix, making a vaginal delivery impossible due to the possibility of life-threatening hemorrhage if labor occurs.\u201d As AAPLOG notes, placenta previa is \u201cfrequently diagnosed in pregnancy on ultrasound around 20 weeks,\u201d but approximately 90% of these will resolve on their own before delivery.\u201d Further, \u201cif significant hemorrhage occurs due to a placenta previa (which again is so rare prior to viability that no incidence is even reported), the patient should be taken for an emergency C-section which is the most expedient way to get her bleeding under control.\u201d In fact, \u201cit would be medically dangerous and irresponsible to try to do an abortion since any instrumentation through the cervix would pierce the placenta and cause immediate massive bleeding.\u201d Further, \u201can abortion would take significantly longer in this case and be much risker for the mother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Notwithstanding these medical facts, the Biden administration posits in its guidance that abortions are needed to stabilize patients \u2014 but with no evidence that any pregnant woman has been, or would be, denied stabilizing treatment and with no evidence that an abortion would be the only way to stabilize the patient. Further, in arguing an abortion may be required \u201cstabilizing treatment,\u201d the Biden administration ignores that the EMTALA requires the stabilization of the second \u201cpatient,\u201d which is defined by the statute to include the \u201cunborn child.\u201d In fact, the EMTALA stressed \u201cthe need to protect the \u2018unborn child\u2019 four times\u201d within the statutory text.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The EMTALA\u2019s mandate that ER physicians attempt to stabilize unborn babies means that the health care provider cannot disregard the unborn baby\u2019s life in providing emergency medical treatment. And, as the amended complaint stressed, \u201cit is obvious that abortion does not stabilize the unborn child from serious jeopardy faced by an emergency medical condition, nor does it preserve the life or health of an unborn child.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the DOJ has not yet answered Texas\u2019s amended complaint, on Tuesday the Biden administration filed <a href=\"https:\/\/aboutblaw.com\/4gj\">suit<\/a> in an Idaho federal court arguing that Idaho\u2019s abortion ban violates the EMTALA.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Idaho bans \u201cabortion,\u201d which is defined by statute to mean intentionally terminating a \u201cclinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman with knowledge that the termination by those means will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of the unborn child.\u201d A physician who performs an abortion may avoid liability, however, if \u201c[t]he physician determined, in his good faith medical judgment and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.\u201d Idaho also provides an exception for doctors who perform abortions on victims of rape or incest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In its lawsuit against Idaho, the Biden administration alleges that under the state\u2019s law, it is illegal for doctors to perform an abortion to \u201cstabilize\u201d women facing a medical emergency. Thus, the DOJ\u2019s complaint maintains that Idaho\u2019s abortion ban violates the EMTALA.<\/p>\n<p>It will be some time before the federal courts rule on the Texas and Idaho cases, although the DOJ will likely seek a preliminary injunction in Idaho, hoping to put an immediate halt on that state\u2019s abortion ban to the extent it applies in emergency rooms. But in deciding whether to grant the Biden administration a preliminary injunction, and then later in ruling on whether the EMTALA overrides state abortion law, the courts will need to first sort through the rhetoric and reach the reality of when an abortion may or may not be required to \u201cstabilize\u201d a pregnant woman.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And contrary to the Biden administration\u2019s narrative, the answer to that question is \u201cnever,\u201d because treating pregnancy loss and ectopic pregnancies are not abortions, and treating other \u201cemergency medical conditions\u201d can be done while also attempting to stabilize the unborn baby \u2014 something required under the EMTALA. <\/p>\n<p>For those few sad circumstances where both patients cannot be stabilized, there is also no conflict because it is also not an abortion to treat the mother, even if the unborn baby does not survive. Rather, an abortion is the intentional killing of an unborn child. But the Biden administration already knows that.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is The Federalist&#8217;s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. <\/p>\n<p>Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. <\/p>\n<p>As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Treating pregnant women\u2019s \u201cemergency medical conditions\u201d never requires ER doctors to perform illegal abortions. The Biden administration\u2019s claims to the contrary represent a dishonest attempt to reinject federal courts into<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}