Attorney General Bonta: Americans Must Be Able to Obtain the Emergency Care They Need, Including Abortion Care

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today released the following statement ahead of the Ninth Circuit en banc oral argument in Idaho v. United States. 

“At the California Department of Justice, we reaffirm our unwavering commitment to protecting EMTALA, a cornerstone of patients’ rights and equitable access to emergency medical care, including abortion care,” said Attorney General Bonta. “This lifesaving law reflects a fundamental principle: no one in this country should be denied emergency medical care in their time of greatest need. Now more than ever, we must safeguard EMTALA to ensure that patients receive the medical care they need, and that medical care decisions remain between patients and their doctors, free from political interference.”  

BACKGROUND

Every hospital in the United States that operates an emergency department and participates in Medicare is subject to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). Under the law, emergency departments are required to provide all patients who have an emergency medical condition with the treatment required to stabilize their condition. EMTALA’s requirement extends to abortion care, which is sometimes necessary to stabilize a pregnant individual experiencing an emergency medical condition. Under Idaho’s radical abortion ban, which came into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, healthcare providers face criminal prosecution and loss of their license for providing this medically necessary care.
 
Idaho v. United States is one of the many cases across the country that follows Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, where the Supreme Court upended decades of legal precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade. In August 2022, the Biden administration successfully sued to block enforcement of Idaho’s ban to the extent it conflicts with EMTALA, winning a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho. Idaho appealed the district court’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case before the Ninth Circuit could weigh in on the merits. This past summer, the Supreme Court held that its decision to hear the case was premature, and dismissed the case without addressing whether EMTALA requires hospitals to provide necessary abortion care to pregnant patients experiencing medical emergencies irrespective of any conflicting state law. This case has been sent back to the Ninth Circuit to decide the appeal of the preliminary injunction.