EMTALA supercedes state law because it is federal law. This is standard legal doctrine.
Texas disagrees. Please see above source.
Nobody has been prosecuted for performing an abortion since the Dobbs decision. Hundreds of abortions have happened in Missouri since Dobbs, and nobody has been prosecuted there.
No one’s going to risk their livelihood on precedent. While legal precedent is important, it doesn’t provide meaningful reassurance when the stakes are this high.
Do you have any specific examples of such cases?
EMTALA does not apply once the patient has been admitted to the hospital. It applies to ER care only.
There is no medicolegal standard for “life-threatening” That determination is, to a degree, subjective.
In many cases, a patient will come to the ER in a non life threatening clinical state and get sicker following admission. EMTALA no longer applies to these patients.
If, in retrospect, a doctor performs an abortion and its decided that the mother’s life was not at risk, they face a felony charge.
Per the Texas Supreme Court, exceptions apply only when death or serious physical impairment is imminent (which is probably too late to save the patient and have a good functional outcome, unfortunately)
The problem here is legislation. There is no medical error. Practitioners are making a risk-benefit assessment and choosing not to martyr themselves.
I feel that you’re not familiar with medical practice and are oversimplifying a very complex issue.
_portrait.jpg){kind=link}