Texas sues over White House guidance on providing emergency abortions

Texas sued the federal government on Thursday over new guidance from the Biden administration directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions regardless of state bans on the procedure.

Those state bans came into effect in the wake of the US supreme court’s reversal of its landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton in the lawsuit argued the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was trying to “use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic”.

HHS did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit focused on guidance issued on Monday advising that a federal law protecting patients’ access to emergency treatment requires performing abortions when doctors believe a pregnant woman’s life or health is threatened.

The guidance came after Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Friday seeking to ease access to services to terminate pregnancies after the supreme court on 24 June overturned the Roe v Wade ruling recognizing a nationwide right of women to obtain abortions.

Abortion services ceased in Texas after the state’s highest court on 2 July, at Paxton’s urging, cleared the way for a nearly century-old abortion ban to take effect.

HHS said the guidance from its US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services agency did not constitute new policy but merely reminded doctors of their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.
But in the lawsuit filed in Lubbock, the Republican-led state of Texas argued that federal law has never authorized the federal government to compel doctors and hospitals to perform abortions and that the guidance was unlawful.

About half the states are expected to move to restrict or ban abortions. Thirteen states, including Texas, had so-called “trigger” laws on the books designed to snap into effect if Roe v Wade was overturned.