KOLO: Nevada’s Lee, Cortez Masto join on to Amicus Brief in SCOTUS abortion case
WASHINGTON (KOLO) - U.S. Representative Susie Lee and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto are joining on to an Amicus Brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold a federal law that requires hospitals receiving Medicare funding to provide stabilizing treatment to those experiencing medical emergencies.
Lee says this can encompass abortions.
They and 257 other members of Congress submitted the brief in support of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act as SCOTUS deliberates over whether a state abortion ban supersedes that federal law.
Lee says the consolidated case, dubbed Idaho v United States and Moyle v United States, has nationwide implications.
“[T]he 99th Congress passed EMTALA to ensure that every person who visits a Medicare-funded hospital with an ‘emergency medical condition’ is offered stabilizing treatment,” the Members write in their Amicus Brief. “Congress chose broad language for that mandate, requiring hospitals that participate in the Medicare program to provide ‘such treatment as may be required to stabilize the medical condition.’… That text—untouched by Congress for the past three decades—makes clear that in situations in which a doctor determines that abortion constitutes the ‘[n]ecessary stabilizing treatment’ for a pregnant patient… federal law requires the hospital to offer it. Yet Idaho has made providing that care a felony, in direct contravention of EMTALA’s mandate that it be offered.”
The Members also said: “respecting the supremacy of federal law is about more than just protecting our system of government; it is about protecting people’s lives. If this Court allows Idaho’s near-total abortion ban to supersede federal law, pregnant patients in Idaho will continue to be denied appropriate medical treatment, placing them at heightened risk for medical complications and severe adverse health outcomes. And health care providers, forced to let Idaho’s abortion law take precedence over their medical judgment about their patients’ best interests, will continue their exile from Idaho, creating maternity-care ‘deserts’ all over the state.”