Wyden presses hospitals for answers about delayed or denied emergency abortion care

A top Senate Democrat is pressing hospitals in states with abortion bans about how they are complying with a federal emergency care law, following reports about women who need emergency reproductive care being turned away.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent letters Monday to eight hospitals in Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina asking about specific policies and procedures to enforce the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

The letters were sent to hospitals where women have reportedly been turned away or experienced delayed care.

Georgia and Florida ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Texas law prohibits all abortion except to save the life of the mother. Louisiana and Missouri similarly ban almost all abortions, with some narrow medical exceptions. North Carolina bans abortion after 12 weeks.

Wyden specifically cited reports from ProPublica about the death of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who waited 20 hours for doctors to perform an emergency procedure after she developed a rare complication from medication abortion. She died, and a state medical board subsequently said her death was “preventable.”

“Across the country, there are reports that women are being turned away by emergency departments when they seek emergency reproductive health care, even in instances where medical professionals determine that, without such care, the patient is at risk of serious complications, infection, or even death,” Wyden wrote. “These women are caught between dangerous state laws that are in clear conflict with – and preempted by – EMTALA.”

Wyden also requested an accounting of the legal and human resource support offered to emergency room personnel “who find themselves caught between their medical care obligations and restrictive state abortion bans.”

EMTALA is a nearly 40-year-old law that requires federally funded hospitals to provide stabilizing care to emergency room patients, no matter their ability to pay. Abortion is the standard of care to stabilize many pregnancy-related conditions, and hospitals have long provided the procedure when necessary.

Last year, the Biden administration launched an investigation into two hospitals in Missouri and Kansas that refused to provide an emergency abortion to a woman with life-threatening pregnancy complications for potential EMTALA violations.

The administration invoked EMTALA in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, saying the federal statute preempts state laws or mandates that lay out a more restrictive definition of an emergency medical condition.

But EMTALA doesn’t specifically mention abortion and doesn’t outline which procedures should be provided. So Idaho sued the administration, arguing state law supersedes the federal requirement, and states can create a carve-out for abortion if the patient’s life is not at risk.

The Supreme Court in June dismissed the case without settling the underlying question on whether federal law allows physicians to perform abortions in medical emergencies.

As a result of that inaction, and because states have been reluctant to provide substantial guidance to doctors about what constitutes a medical emergency, abortion care remains a legal gray area in dozens of states.

Wyden’s letters come ahead of the Finance Committee’s Tuesday hearing on reproductive care and the impact of state abortion bans.