Catholic medical group sues Biden administration over emergency room abortion rule

CNA Staff, Jan 14, 2025 / 17:15 pm

A Catholic medical group has filed suit against the Biden administration over the government’s attempt to force emergency room doctors to perform abortions under a 40-year-old federal law. 

The Catholic Medical Association (CMA), a professional guild that promotes and advocates Catholic ethics in the medical industry, filed the lawsuit on Friday in U.S. district court. The legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing the CMA.

In the lawsuit, CMA argues that the federal government acted unlawfully when in July 2022 it directed that hospitals and emergency rooms would be required to perform abortions under the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). 

That law requires that hospitals provide stabilizing treatment in emergency rooms for any patients who show up. It was originally enacted to ensure that hospitals would not turn away patients who could not afford to pay for medical treatments.

The law itself “does not mandate, direct, approve, or even suggest the provision of any specific treatment,” CMA’s lawsuit argues. It further “says nothing about abortion and does not guarantee access to abortion.”

The government’s directive “threatens to second-guess the medical judgment or moral or religious beliefs of a hospital or physician,” the suit argues.

The filing points out that every state allows abortion to save the life of a mother, and further that no states prohibit miscarriage care or treatments of ectopic pregnancies. Catholic medical directives, meanwhile, forbid “direct abortions.”

The filing says the EMTALA rule violates both federal law and constitutional religious freedom rules.

Matt Bowman, a senior lawyer with ADF, argued in announcing the suit that the federal government has “no business compelling doctors or hospitals to end unborn lives, especially when the law they are citing grants them no such authority.”

“Emergency room physicians can and do treat life-threatening conditions such as ectopic pregnancies,” Bowman said. “And every state allows doctors to do whatever is necessary to preserve the life of a mother.”

Various court rulings leave status of federal law uncertain

Challenges to the government’s EMTALA rule have played out in several federal courts over the past few years. 

In January of last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that emergency room doctors were not required to perform abortions under the federal medical law. In October the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Biden administration’s appeal on that ruling.

In June, meanwhile, the Supreme Court directed that hospitals in Idaho would be required to at least temporarily perform abortions under EMTALA despite the state’s broad abortion ban. 

Bowman told CNA that the various court rulings “can appear to be confusing.” 

CMA brought the suit, he noted, because earlier rulings from various courts have not resolved the dispute at the national level, leaving many medical officials open to being forced to perform abortions under the federal law. 

“At the end of the day, the Supreme Court has not ruled on what we call the merits of this question,” he said. “They have not made the ultimate decision. Everything they do short of that leaves that question open.” 

On Day 1 of the Trump administration, “the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could take this mandate away,” he pointed out. 

“But until they do, we’re going to do everything we can in court to protect our clients’ rights to not perform abortions,” he added.