WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The Supreme Court rejected a bid by the Biden-Harris administration to force doctors in Texas to commit so-called “emergency” abortions in violation of state law.
The justices rebuffed the Biden Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked enforcement of pro-abortion federal guidance mandating that emergency facilities perform abortions in states that ban them.
The guidance, released by the Biden administration in July 2022 in response to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, purported to reinterpret the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) of 1986 to require physicians to “provide” abortions to women with an “emergency medical condition” – even if doing so violates state abortion restrictions.
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EMTALA, which applies to hospitals that participate in Medicare, does not mention abortion and actually requires protection for an “unborn child.”
Abortion – the destruction of an innocent preborn child – is always gravely immoral and is never necessary nor justifiable for alleged reasons of “health.”
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix halted enforcement of the Biden administration guidance in 2022, and, in January, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his decision in an unanimous ruling. Texas and two pro-life medical associations – the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists and Christian Medical & Dental Associations – had sued to block the guidance.
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Biden administration Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the Supreme Court to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s order.
The Supreme Court announced its decision on Monday morning without comment.
Texas has some of the country’s strongest pro-life protections, including a near-total ban that prohibits abortion except when a woman has a “life-threatening physical condition” and is allegedly “at risk of death” or “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
In a separate case earlier this year, the Supreme Court left in place a lower court ruling in Idaho allowing the Biden administration to force the state, which also has a near-total abortion ban, to permit some emergency room abortions while litigation plays out.