The Trump administration on Tuesday, June 3, revoked a Biden-era requirement that compelled emergency room doctors to perform abortions for women whose health is in peril, including in states where abortion is restricted or banned.

 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced on June 3 that it would rescind the July 2022 guidelines issued under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

 

 

 

That law, originally passed in 1986, was designed to prevent “patient dumping” by requiring Medicare-participating hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment to patients who can’t pay for treatment rather than transferring them.

 

The Biden administration expanded the requirements in the wake of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, requiring hospitals to perform abortions as “stabilizing treatment” in emergency situations.

 

 

 

The government will “continue to enforce” EMTALA “including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy,” CMS said this week.

 

In its announcement, the government noted that it “will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”

 

The move by the CMS to rescind the Biden-era requirement was not a surprise. But it added to growing confusion around emergency care and abortions since the Supreme Court rescinded the national right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade.

 

“It basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril,” Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, said of the Trump administration’s move.

 

 

 

The administration did not explicitly tell hospitals that they were free to turn away women seeking abortions in medical emergencies. Its policy statement said hospitals would still be subject to a federal law requiring them to provide reproductive health care in emergency situations. But it did not explain exactly what that meant.

 

Mr. Gostin and other experts said the murky policy could have dire consequences for pregnant women by discouraging doctors from performing emergency abortions in states where abortions are banned or restricted.

 

“We’ve already seen since the overturn of Roe that uncertainty and confusion tends to mean physicians are unwilling to intervene, and the more unwilling physicians are to intervene, the more risk there is in pregnancy,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California-Davis and a historian of the American abortion debate.

 

 

 

“This is not just withdrawing what the Biden administration did,” she said. “It’s creating a lot of unanswered questions about what hospitals are supposed to do going forward. So more confusion means more risk.”