The Illinois House on Tuesday passed House Bill 581, The Hospital Emergency Service Act, which declares abortion to be a “stabilizing treatment” during pregnancy. The bill passed 71-36 along party lines.
The bill is said to have been authored in response to the anticipated Supreme Court decision this June regarding an Idaho law that protects preborn children from abortion when their mother is facing a health complication during pregnancy. It’s important to note the distinction between ending a pregnancy via induced abortion and ending a pregnancy via induced delivery. In an induced abortion, the preborn child is intentionally and deliberately killed during the procedure while in induced delivery, the child is delivered and attempts are made to save her life along with her mother’s.
In August of 2022, following the fall of Roe v. Wade, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s trigger law, which protects nearly all preborn children from abortion. The DOJ argues that the law violates the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires that hospitals receiving federal Medicaid funding provide stabilizing treatment to patients in the emergency room during a medical emergency.
The DOJ claims that women’s lives will be at risk because emergency room doctors would be unable to commit abortions as a stabilizing treatment under the Idaho law. However, induced abortion is not necessary to save a mother’s life or protect her health because preterm delivery can be carried out without intentionally killing the child as abortion intends.
The Illinois bill states, “For purposes of this Act, ‘stabilizing treatment includes abortion when necessary to resolve the patient’s injury or acute medical condition that is liable to cause death or severe injury or illness.”
Induced abortion — purposefully killing the preborn child — is not a solution to a medical emergency, does not resolve injuries, and is not a stabilizing treatment. Though it may be vital to end a pregnancy, the child does not have to be killed prior to delivery.
“I’ve been practicing emergency medicine for 27 years. I’ve never been involved with a case or heard about a case where abortion was necessary to stabilize a patient,” said Rep. Bill Hauter during a floor debate. “If it happened, if it was needed, current Illinois law would not prevent it.”
Under the Illinois bill, The Illinois Department of Health would be allowed to investigate hospitals for violations and could issue penalties starting at $50,000. In other words, doctors could be investigated for not killing a preborn child during a pregnant woman’s visit to the ER.
The bill now heads to the Illinois Senate.
