The Biden administration’s lawyer scrambled on Tuesday to explain to the U.S. Supreme Court how a 1986 federal law that promotes preserving the health of the mother and her “unborn child” in medical emergencies should require Idaho hospitals to perform abortions against exceptions outlined in state law.
Idaho’s Defense of Life Act law, which went into effect in August 2022, prohibits abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or if a physician deems it necessary to save the mother’s life. The federal government, adamant about advancing President Joe Biden’s abortion agenda, sued Idaho over its popular life law.
The Department of Justice hinged its lawsuit on a manufactured federal abortion mandate that came through the Biden administration reinterpreting the Reagan-era Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created the expansion after Biden issued an executive order demanding it in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling.
EMTALA, designed to stop hospitals from turning away patients based on their inability to pay for their expenses, explicitly does “not preempt any State or local law requirement, except to the extent that the requirement directly conflicts with.” The Biden administration, however, claimed abortion should be classified as a “stabilizing” procedure “irrespective of any state laws or mandates that apply to specific procedures.”
After a series of conflicting court rulings and appeals, the Supreme Court issued a stay in January that allowed the enforcement of the life-saving law throughout the judicial process. During the questioning portion
