'How Close to Death is Close Enough?': Fury Over Latest Texas Abortion Ruling
SAY WHAT? - Reproductive rights advocates on Wednesday warned that pregnant people across Texas are now at risk of facing life-threatening health crises without access to emergency abortion care, following a ruling by a federal judge who rejected guidance from the Biden administration.
U.S. District Judge James Hendrix's ruling Tuesday night rejected guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that—regardless of the state's abortion ban—would require Texas doctors to perform abortions in the case of a medical emergency.
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court's right-wing majority in June, HHS issued guidance saying the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires medical professionals to provide abortion care to a pregnant patient experiencing a medical emergency.
The 1986 law requires anyone who comes to a hospital's emergency department to be "stabilized and treated," and the Biden administration argued that abortion care qualifies as stabilizing treatment for a pregnant person in a medical crisis.
Hendrix, who was appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump, sided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and two doctors' associations in Texas which support forced pregnancy.
The ruling was handed down a month after the story of Houston resident Elizabeth Weller became public. Weller experienced a premature rupture of membranes at 18 weeks of pregnancy, causing her own health and that of her fetus to decline. Weller was told that under Texas's abortion ban, she would have to wait until the fetal heartbeat stopped before having a medical abortion, even as her condition worsened. An ethics committee at her local hospital eventually determined she could receive care—after an ordeal she described to NPR as a "dystopian nightmare."