A court order that says hospitals cannot federally be required to provide pregnancy terminations when they violate a Texas abortion ban will stay for now, the Supreme Court said on Monday.
The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order, and there were no publicly noted dissents. Texas had asked the justices to leave the order in place while the Biden administration had asked the justices to throw it out.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision a major victory”.
The Biden administration argues that a federal law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, requires emergency rooms to provide abortions if a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where the procedure is banned. The law only applies to emergency rooms that receive Medicare funding, which most hospitals do.
The Supreme Court decision comes weeks before a presidential election in which Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has put abortion at the centre of her campaign, attacking Republican challenger Donald Trump for appointing judges to the high court who overturned nationwide abortion rights in 2022.
I will never stop fighting for a woman’s right to emergency medical care and to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade so that women in every state have access to the care they need, Harris said on social media on Monday evening.
Texas’ abortion ban has also been a centrepiece of Democratic US Rep. Colin Allred’s challenge against Republican US Sen. Ted Cuz for his seat.
At a campaign event over the weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, hundreds of Allred’s supporters broke out in raucous applause when he vowed to protect a woman’s right to an abortion.
