The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says an Oklahoma hospital did not violate federal law when doctors told a woman with a nonviable pregnancy to wait in the parking lot until her condition worsened enough to qualify for an abortion under the state’s strict ban.
Jaci Statton, 26, was among several women last year who challenged abortion restrictions that went into effect in Republican-led states after the Supreme Court revoked the nationwide right to abortion in 2022.
Rather than join a lawsuit, Statton filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The complaint came a little more than a year after Biden’s administration informed hospitals that they must provide abortion services if the mother’s life is at risk. At the time, President Joe Biden’s administration said EMTALA supersedes state abortion bans that don’t have adequate exceptions for medical emergencies.
The Biden administration’s denial of Statton’s claim is the latest development in the ongoing scrutiny over how to apply EMTALA in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. It also underscores the uphill legal battle reproductive rights advocates when pushing back against state abortion bans.
According to the complaint, Statton learned she was pregnant in early 2023 and soon began experiencing severe pain and nausea. Doctors in Oklahoma eventually told her that she had a partial molar pregnancy, which left untreated could cause hemorrhaging, infection, and even death.
“However, providers told Jaci that they could not provide an abortion until she was actively crashing in front of them or on the verge of a heart attack,” the complaint stated. “In the meantime, the best that they could offer was to let Jaci sit in the parking lot so that she would be close to the hospital when her condition further deteriorated.”
If federal law saying hospitals can’t just let pregnant people die doesn’t apply here, when the hell would it apply?
When it’s more politically convenient
Let’s see the Dems try and wash over this one.
Can’t blame the GOP when it’s Biden’s administration.
Plenty of blame to go around
And it’s all the admins fault. Who’s else would it be? Down votes mean nothing.
It’s the nurses’ fault for not telling their doctor bosses to go fuck themselves, it’s the doctors’ fault for not telling the hospital admins to go fuck themselves, it’s the admins’ fault for not telling state lawmakers to go fuck themselves, it’s state lawmakers’ fault for passing horrific laws that call for this kind of medical malpractice, and it’s the administration’s fault for not telling hospital admins and state lawmakers to go fuck themselves
Like I said, plenty of blame to go around here
e: now with apostrophes
e2; and completed sentences!
I’m not saying it’s only the admin’s fault, but the decision ultimately came down to an admin decision, did it not? Are you saying it’s not Biden’s admin’s fault at all?
Um, I’d start with the current Supreme Court and their striking down of Roe v Wade?
So this is how our rights die. “It’s the other guys fault! Can’t help it~!”
Laws aren’t real, and Biden’s team did this.
By your logic, someone can throw a chair through a window, then if someone cuts themselves on the window while maintenance gets to work fixing it, it’s the maintenance person’s fault
Just like the “I DiD tHiS!” gas station stickers when gas was high, but now it’s low and somehow diaper don did that. You deplorables can’t see past one step in a series of events. Literal definition of the R word
More like the admin closing the window on someone who’s climbing half way through it and them blaming the murder on the person who broke the window.
