Texas sues Biden administration for forcing hospitals to commit abortions or lose funding

Texas sued the Biden administration on Thursday for threatening to remove Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that refuse to commit abortions in certain circumstances, according to Texas Right to Life.

The Biden administration announced last Monday that hospitals must carry out abortion procedures on pregnant women in life-threatening situations, claiming that federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) guidelines preempt state laws that ban abortion without exceptions. However, there is not a single pro-life state law that bans abortion without the inclusion of exceptions to save the life of the mother. In addition, abortion (defined legally as the intentional killing of a preborn human being) is not necessary to save the life of the mother, as doctors can quickly carry out a life-saving emergency C-section or preterm delivery if a mother’s life is at risk.

Intentionally and directly killing the preborn child is an abortion; providing lifesaving treatment or care to a mother that may end in the unintentional death of the child is — according to pro-life state laws — not legally defined as an abortion.

READ: Biden mulls declaring a ‘public health emergency’ over abortion

Texas Right to Life argues that the Biden administration is manipulating the emergency provisions of EMTALA, and Texas has asked a federal U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to block the Biden administration’s new abortion requirement. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in the lawsuit that federal law does not confer a right to abortion. The lawsuit states, “The Abortion Mandate requires that a provider perform an abortion if ‘abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve [an emergency medical condition].’ This condition has never been a part of EMTALA.”

Paxton also noted, “EMTALA does not mandate access to abortion or codify a right to an abortion as ‘stabilizing treatment’ for an ’emergency medical condition.’ The Abortion Mandate cites no other federal law that would authorize or require an abortion. No federal statute, including EMTALA, supersedes or preempts the States’ power to regulate or prohibit abortion.”

Hospitals, regardless of state or federal laws on abortion, have always been able to treat pregnant women experiencing medical emergencies without intentionally killing children in the womb, which most pro-life laws — such as the Texas Heartbeat Act — define as (emphasis added):

[…T]he act of using or prescribing an instrument, a drug, a medicine, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant. The term does not include birth control devices or oral contraceptives. An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to:
(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;
(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or
(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.

It is vital to provide pregnant women with the health care they need, but abortion, defined by law as intentional killing, is not medically necessary.

“This administration has a hard time following the law, and now they are trying to have their appointed bureaucrats mandate that hospitals and emergency medicine physicians perform abortions,” Paxton said. “I will ensure that President Biden will be forced to comply with the Supreme Court’s important decision concerning abortion and I will not allow him to undermine and distort existing laws to fit his administration’s unlawful agenda.”

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