SCOTUS Abortion case examines what care doctors can provide in emergency rooms [Video]

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) – This week at the Supreme Court, Justices will hear arguments in a case of which law takes precedent, State, or Federal.

It deals with EMTALA – the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas with the ACLU explains.

“It says that every hospital must provide whatever treatment is necessary to any individual who comes to that hospital’s emergency room experiencing an emergency medical condition,” said Kolbi-Molinas.

Idaho’s laws ban doctors from performing emergency abortions unless the woman is near death.

“Doctors are being placed in a position where they have to choose between criminal liability, the potential that they could go to jail, or offering life and health saving care that their patients need”, said Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward.

“It’s replacing their medical judgment with a legal judgment,” said Lawyer Lindsay Harrison, who represents St. Luke’s hospital system, the largest private employer in Idaho.

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