In post-Dobbs America, access to emergency healthcare is dependent on which state you are in when you arrive to the ER. In June 2024 after hearing arguments for Moyle v. US (Idaho v. US), the US Supreme Court refused to decide whether state laws that restrict abortion can keep physicians, and the hospitals where they practice, from providing abortion as necessary emergency care to stabilize pregnant individuals with emergency conditions. This delay by the Court only reinforces the uncertainty and chaos in delivering emergency care to millions of Americans.
 
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) was specifically passed during the Reagan Administration in response to the inappropriate inter-hospital transfer of patients in need of emergency care due to their lack of financial resources (patient dumping). One particular reason EMTALA was enacted was in response to cases of dumping those in active labor from one hospital to another.
 
Physicians and hospitals will always shy away from legal, and especially criminal, liability when there is uncertainty about whether they may be liable in doing their job. Care of women with emergency conditions, by necessity, must include abortion for diagnoses as wide ranging as pre-eclampsia, pregnancy-related cardiomyopathy, previable premature rupture of membranes, ectopic pregnancies, and many more. In nearly half the country, women’s health, fertility, and lives continue to be at risk and healthcare chaos reigns.
 
If federal EMTALA protections were to be overturned, pregnant women and their doctors in our Commonwealth would have their emergency healthcare options restricted to preventing death or serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major bodily function. Pregnancy and emergency healthcare is more nuanced and complex than what is currently provided for in our PA laws, should we no longer have federal EMTALA protections.
 
To protect access to emergency healthcare for pregnant patients, states must codify the same protections as EMTALA and specify that such protections include abortion and other reproductive healthcare. In this way, Pennsylvanians can be reassured that their emergency care will not be jeopardized by draconian attempts to restrict abortion.
 
Please join us in co-sponsoring this important legislation to preserve emergency care and the health, fertility, and lives of Pennsylvanians.

Statutes/Laws affected:
Printer's No. 0814: P.L.130, No.48