AUSTIN — Texas sued the Biden administration Thursday for threatening hospitals to either commit abortions or risk losing their Medicaid and Medicare funds.
Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter on Monday to hospitals and doctors across the country trying to expand abortion. While the federal directive claims to focus only on life-threatening circumstances, language in the administration’s new guidance would actually broaden abortions when the mother’s life is not in danger.
Pro-Life policies across the nation have exceptions for situations in which a woman’s pregnancy jeopardizes her life. Such circumstances are truly heartbreaking, and the Pro-Life movement believes all attempts should be pursued to save the lives of both mother and child. For the rare instances in which the mother’s life or physical health is at risk, Texas includes a clearly defined exception in every Pro-Life law. Thus, the Biden administration’s memo would be unnecessary without a larger agenda.
Biden and his allies are attempting to manipulate the important emergency provisions of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) for their pro-abortion ideology. The new directive unlawfully takes EMTALA outside its bounds, falsely claiming: “[w]hen a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person—or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition—that state law is preempted.” Federal law explicitly states that EMTALA “do[es] not preempt any State or local law requirement…” Furthermore, courts have previously asserted the policy does not allow the federal government to mandate what specific treatment is provided under the act. Thus, the Biden administration cannot order physicians to address a mother’s life-threatening condition with abortion compared to other medical responses that would save her life.
Texas Right to Life Senior Legislative Associate Rebecca Parma added, “Joe Biden is trying to weaponize our communities’ life-saving doctors and hospitals to push his abortion agenda. We look forward to once again beating the Biden administration in court and saving lives.”
By attempting to override state law and allow abortions when the mother’s life is not in danger, the Biden administration forces doctors and hospitals to either break state law or risk their participation in Medicare.
Texas’ lawsuit is filed in a federal district court in Lubbock, Texas, the same court that dismissed Planned Parenthood’s attack on the town’s Pro-Life Sanctuary City for the Unborn ordinance last year.
Texas will not be intimidated by the aggression of the Biden administration. Instead, we continue to protect innocent human Life; ensure our Pro-Life laws are fully enforced, including against executive overreach; and build a fully Pro-Life state where women and their preborn children flourish. Pregnant women can find free help in their communities at TexasPregnancy.org.
