Catholic medical professionals sue to overturn Biden abortion mandate

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) recently issued a press release announcing a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Catholic Medical Association. The group, a national network of about 2,500 physicians and health care providers, argues that a Biden-Harris era mandate violates their conscience rights, and that it oversteps executive authority.

In 2022, the Biden-Harris administration issued a mandate for hospitals to commit so-called medically necessary abortions, claiming that it’s required under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) claimed the requirement preempts state laws, even though every state in the country with abortion restrictions already includes exceptions to save the mother’s life. (Technically, however, intentionally and directly killing a preborn child is not medically necessary; preterm emergency delivery is not an induced abortion.)

“If a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide that treatment,” the HHS guidance said. “When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted.”

There have been numerous court battles to stop the Biden-Harris mandate already, and the Catholic Medical Association’s is the most recent lawsuit filed.

“Doctors — especially in emergency rooms—are tasked with preserving life. Federal bureaucrats have no business compelling doctors or hospitals to end unborn lives, especially when the law they are citing grants them no such authority. Emergency room physicians can and do treat life-threatening conditions such as ectopic pregnancies. And every state allows doctors to do whatever is necessary to preserve the life of a mother,” ADF Senior Counsel Matt Bowman, director of regulatory practice, said.

“Elective abortion is not life-saving care—it ends the life of the unborn child — and EMTALA does not grant the government authority to force doctors to perform these dangerous procedures; rather, it requires doctors to treat a pregnant woman and her ‘unborn child,'” Bowman added. “We urge the court to follow Supreme Court precedent and allow doctors to perform their life-giving duties without fear of government officials forcing them to violate their beliefs.”

Though Biden is no longer in office, the lawsuit also specifically targets other government officials from the Biden-Harris administration: Xavier Becerra, Biden’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The Biden administration exploited EMTALA to push the pro-abortion narrative that intentionally and directly killing preborn children may be medically necessary and should be committed in emergency rooms. However, induced abortion is not the medical standard of care, and every state in the country, including those with pro-life laws, already include exceptions for medical necessity.