The Supreme Court decided not to hear oral arguments regarding the Biden administration’s plan to force hospitals to perform emergency abortions in Texas.
The “certiorari denied” order means that the lower court’s ruling will stand.
SCOTUS did not provide a reason.
Texas sued the Department of Health and Human Service when it used the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) to force health providers to perform emergency abortions.
Texas said it allows abortion if the mother’s life is in danger “or faces a serious risk of ‘substantial impairment of a major bodily function.'”
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock, TX, agreed with Texas, blocking the guidance.
Hendrix ruled: “That guidance goes well beyond EMTALA’s text, which protects both mothers and unborn children, is silent as to abortion, and preempts state law only when the two directly conflict.”
The Biden administration appealed.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Hendrix’s ruling, refusing “to expand the scope of EMTALA:”
- “The Texas plaintiffs argument that medical treatment is historically subject to police power of the States, not to be superseded unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress, is convincing,” the opinion states.
- The federal statute “does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child especially when EMTALA imposes equal stabilization obligations,” the court document says.
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