EMTALA Pregnancy Protections Versus State Abortion Bans: The Supreme Court Will Decide
Health Affairs January 9, 2024
From the moment that the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, it was evident that part of its massive legal fallout would be a major conflict between states pursuing total or near-total abortion bans and the protections afforded all Americans under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). That conflict has now arrived at the United States Supreme Court in two consolidated cases from Idaho—Moyle v United States and Idaho v United States—that squarely focus on the relationship between EMTALA and state abortion bans.
On January 5, in a startling move, the Court stayed a lower-court injunction against Idaho’s enforcement of its abortion ban against Medicare-participating hospitals, thereby allowing the ban to take full...