The Hill News

Last week’s vote on the anti-abortion measure, H.R. 538, was a disappointing new low for the House.  The heated debate occasioned dueling letters by Rep.’s Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.) and the bill’s author, Rep. Joseph Pitts (R.-Penn.), about whether the bill would allow institutions and doctors to refuse to provide care even in life-threatening emergencies.

    At issue are patient protections from an anti-“patient dumping” law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Schakowsky’s letter noted that the “bill would, in effect, strip EMTALA of its power to ensure that women in emergency situations receive abortion care at hospitals by making their right to health care secondary to the hospital’s ability to refuse to provide abortion care.” Pitts, on the other hand, claimed that because EMTALA refers to “unborn child,”  “EMTALA currently recognizes both lives.”

    Who’s right? Schakowsky is, by! a mile.  EMTALA uses “unborn child” in three places; all make clear that a hospital seeking to transfer a woman in “active labor” must assess health risks from the transfer for both the woman in labor and the child she will deliver.  The law does not confer a freestanding interest in the health of an “unborn child” that allows hospitals to deny care to a woman experiencing a miscarriage.  If it did, the Pitts bill would be superfluous.

Read more...