skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Trump and Harris notch easy wins as focus turns to battlegrounds; Experts express caution over post-election AI deepfakes; Report: Colorado's housing crisis linked to billionaire investors; Election Day is over; now it's a waiting game.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

A Cambodian poultry farmer who lost his livelihood could be a hero for others, rural Montanans are anxiously awaiting a court ruling over a climate lawsuit brought by young people, and Northeast states say more housing for working families could boost jobs.

Supreme Court hears arguments on Idaho's near-total abortion ban

play audio
Play

Wednesday, April 24, 2024   

By Mary Anne Franks for Ms. Magazine.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Northern Rockies News Service reporting for the Ms. Magazine-Public News Service Collaboration


People end up in emergency rooms for a variety of reasons. They’re having trouble breathing. They’ve suddenly developed chest pains. They’re bleeding uncontrollably. They’ve fallen off a roof, they’ve crashed their car, they’ve overdosed, they’re suicidal, they got stabbed in a fight, they got shot by police.

Some people who need emergency services are poor, or have no insurance, or are in the country illegally, or have committed a crime. Under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), they are all entitled to receive emergency care. This law is based on a simple principle: Hospitals shouldn’t be allowed to let people die based on who they are, how much they can pay, or what they have done.

On April 24, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Moyle v. U.S., a case that will determine whether individual states are allowed to exclude a single group from this basic protection: pregnant women. The state of Idaho claims that it has the right to forbid pregnant women and girls—and only pregnant women and girls—from receiving emergency care that could save their lives.

How, and why, would a state want to do this?

First, the how: In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs that forced childbirth does not violate the Constitution. This allowed Idaho’s 2020 “Defense of Life Act,” a draconian anti-abortion law, to go into effect. According to the law, anyone who performs an abortion faces imprisonment of up to five years in prison. Healthcare professionals who perform abortions will also have their professional licenses suspended or revoked permanently.

This puts the state law directly in conflict with federal emergency care law. EMTALA requires Medicare-funded hospitals (which most hospitals are) to provide medically necessary stabilizing treatment to any patient with an “emergency medical condition.” An emergency medical condition is one that, in the absence of immediate medical attention, is likely to cause “serious impairment to bodily functions,” “serious dysfunction of any bodily organ,” or otherwise puts the health of the patient “in serious jeopardy.”

Pregnancy complications are a common reason for emergency care visits, and the medically necessary stabilizing treatment necessary to prevent serious injury or death to women and girls experiencing those complications sometimes includes the termination of the pregnancy.

Given that an abortion is sometimes the only medical treatment that will prevent death or serious bodily injury to women, a more accurate title for Idaho’s abortion law would be the “Let Women Die Act.” But as seen in the majority decision in Dobbs and the arguments propounded recently by the Alliance Defending Freedom in the mifepristone access case, forced birth proponents are rarely candid about their necropolitical agenda. Defenders of Idaho’s law instead feign outrage at the suggestion that the law will kill women, pointing to the law’s exception for abortions performed by a physician who “determined, in his good faith medical judgment and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

Idaho insists that the law’s exception for abortions necessary to save the life of the mother means that there is no conflict between it and federal law. But as the Department of Justice pointed out when it sued to stop the Idaho law from being enforced with regard to EMTALA’s requirements, federal law requires emergency medical care necessary to prevent serious injury, not just death. The federal law does not authorize the withholding of essential medical treatment to patients who are only close to, but have not yet arrived, at death’s door.

What is more, as countless medical professionals have attested, the line between serious bodily injury or death is rarely precise. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to predict the exact moment that a serious medical condition becomes a life-threatening one.

As the National Women’s Law Center detailed in its amicus brief in the case, “No clinical bright line defines when a patient’s condition crosses the lines of this continuum. At what point does the condition of a pregnant woman with a uterine hemorrhage deteriorate from health-threatening to the point that an abortion is ‘necessary’ to prevent death? When is it certain she will die but for medical intervention? How many blood units does she have to lose? One? Two? Five? How fast does she have to be bleeding?”

The recognition that serious bodily injury and death are so closely related as to be nearly indistinguishable has long been reflected in U.S. law. At common law, a person could be convicted of murder not only if he intended to kill but also if he intended to inflict “grievous bodily injury.” The law of self-defense generally allows a person to use deadly force when facing an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, not only to herself but to others.

Significantly, Idaho’s self-defense law specifies that a person is not required to wait for the danger to become fully apparent before acting: “The defense of self or of another does not require a person to wait until he or she ascertains whether the danger is apparent or real. A person confronted with such danger has a clear right to act upon appearances such as would influence the action of a reasonable person.”

Unless, of course, the person in danger is a pregnant woman.


Mary Anne Franks wrote this article for Ms. Magazine.


get more stories like this via email
more stories
Some organizations point to low pay, racial bias in school systems and retention challenges as the biggest obstacles to recruiting more Black men into teaching. (RDNE/Pexels)

Social Issues

play sound

In a country where Black men make up less than 2% of the teaching workforce, a program in Jacksonville is working to shift the balance by recruiting 1…


Social Issues

play sound

By Jabari Gibbs for The Current.Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Rural News Network-Public News Serv…

Social Issues

play sound

It is Election Day and Maine voters are weighing the future of the state's extensive trail system. If passed, the Maine Trails Bond would inject …


More than one of every 10 voters in today's general election is expected to be Latino, a 20.5% increase from 2016, according to the NALEO Educational Fund. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

Election Day is finally here, and this year more than 17 million Latinos are expected to cast a ballot. The National Association of Latino Elected …

Social Issues

play sound

A package of New York City bills can help preserve affordable housing. The Community Land Act creates more pathways for communities to purchase and …

More than 36,000,000 Latinos nationwide will be eligible to vote in the 2024 presidential election - an increase of four million voters since 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

By Lourdes Medrano for Yes! Media.Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Arizona News Connection reporting for the Yes! Media-Public News Service …

Social Issues

play sound

A nonprofit report aims to build trust in Michigan's voting system by explaining the safeguards that ensure fair and free elections. The report …

Social Issues

play sound

Wyoming's secretary of state is asking county clerks to report non-citizens who try to vote, although cases of that - or any other - kind of election …

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021