Reproductive Equity Now Condemns Trump Administration’s Revocation of Protections for Emergency, Life-Saving Abortion Care
This politically motivated move to rescind EMTALA protections for life-saving abortion holds deadly consequences across the country
BOSTON (June 3, 2025) – Reproductive Equity Now’s President Rebecca Hart Holder released the following statement after the Trump administration today announced that the Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid are rescinding federal guidance that requires hospitals to perform stabilizing or life-saving abortion care to patients who are pregnant or experiencing pregnancy-loss. This guidance was issued by the Biden Administration in 2022 to clarify hospitals' obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to perform emergency abortions, even in states where abortion is banned.
“Donald Trump just signed off on yet another death sentence, making the United States an even more dangerous place to start or grow a family. Stripping emergency abortion protections is not just cruel—it’s deadly. Across this country, especially in states with abortion restrictions, more pregnant people will be left to suffer, to bleed out, and to die in hospital parking lots after being denied life-saving abortion care when they needed it most. This crisis will not stop at state lines. Here in New England, Trump’s rollback of EMTALA creates dangerous gray areas that could ultimately delay or deny life-saving care, even in states where abortion remains legal,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, President of Reproductive Equity Now. “This is about more than abortion—it’s about whether we believe pregnant people deserve to live. It’s about whether politicians override the judgment of doctors and patients. And it’s about whether we can be safe when extremist ideologues get to decide who lives and who dies. We cannot sit back and let the Trump administration follow the Project 2025 playbook. States must act now to make it undeniably clear: in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, in New Hampshire, and in every corner of this country, abortion care is life-saving health care.”
Background on EMTALA
EMTALA is the federal law that requires hospital emergency rooms to provide life-saving and stabilizing care to any person presenting at an emergency department. After the Dobbs decision, the Biden administration released guidance that clarified that under EMTALA, hospitals must still provide life-saving pregnancy care, including abortion, even in states that otherwise ban abortion. The purpose of this was to make sure that it was clear that people, no matter where they live in the United States, can access life-saving abortion care.
Past Legal Challenges Regarding Emergency Abortion Care
In line with this guidance, the Biden Administration sued Idaho on the grounds that the state’s abortion ban violated EMTALA because its exceptions are too narrow to allow doctors to provide emergency abortions to stabilize a patient. The case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court last term before being sent back to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This March, the Trump administration announced that it would drop this case, which signaled that the Administration would take further action to restrict emergency abortion care through regulatory routes.
Larger Anti-Abortion Playbook
The recommendation to rescind any "distorted pro-abortion interpretations" of EMTALA was outlined in Project 2025. This anti-abortion playbook also includes recommendations to enforce the Comstock Act with regard to prohibiting the mailing of abortion medications and revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the first drug used in a two-drug regimen for medication abortion.
Impact on Human Lives
Already, we have seen several reported cases of people who have died in restricted states, including the case of Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother in Georgia, who died of septic shock after the state’s restrictive abortion laws led to a delay in care in 2022. In Texas one year after Dobbs, the maternal mortality rate increased an alarming 56%. Cases of hospitals denying care aren’t just happening in states with abortion bans or restrictions. In California, the state has filed a lawsuit against a hospital for violating state laws by refusing to provide emergency abortion care to a patient experiencing a life-threatening obstetric emergency.
How States Can Take Action
Currently, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, proposed legislation would affirm the right to emergency pregnancy-related care amidst federal attacks:
In Massachusetts, last year, Governor Healey’s Executive Order No. 633 reaffirmed that Massachusetts law protects the right to emergency medical treatment, including the right to emergency abortion care. S.2522 heard today before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, would, amongst other provisions, reaffirm in statute that patients in Massachusetts have the right to emergency abortion care under state law. S.1244/H.1815 similarly would also require hospitals to provide emergency abortion care to protect a patient’s health and life.
In the Connecticut General Assembly, S.B. 7 is legislation that would secure, at the state level, protections enumerated in the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), and ensure the ability of patients to access emergency reproductive health care for miscarriage management and ectopic pregnancies, if EMTALA is not adequately enforced, revoked, or is weakened by the federal government.
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