US abortion: Supreme Court allows Texas to continue to ban emergency abortions

The US Supreme Court has ruled that Texas hospitals can continue to deny emergency abortion care to women experiencing miscarriages, despite a federal law that requires hospitals to care for people in emergencies.1 The court did not accept a challenge by the Biden administration to a lower court ruling banning emergency abortions, thus letting the ban stay in place.

The decision conflicts with that made by the court in a similar case in June, when it allowed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) to permit emergency abortions in Idaho despite a state law prohibiting them.2 EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency treatment regardless of a person’s ability to pay or, if it cannot provide appropriate care, to transfer the person to a hospital that can.

The latest court ruling denial means that Texas is the only state in which the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services is unable to enforce the EMTALA law. The ruling is unusual because …