The American medical establishment is at it again, attempting to scare women into believing they will not be able to get health care for things like ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages because they conflate them with abortion.
While miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other pregnancy complications can be life-threatening and require emergency care, abortion — the elective murder of an unborn baby — is not and will never be health care. And no law banning abortion has any effect on women being able to seek care for genuine pregnancy complications.
But that fact is not stopping the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) from peddling that sort of nonsense in response to the Trump administration revoking guidance “requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions.”
The move rescinded Biden administration guidance on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) that said the 1986 law required abortions to be provided even in states where abortion bans were enacted.
ACEP went into panic mode after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, but insisted EMTALA still required emergency health care providers to perform abortions. Now that the Trump administration has rejected that theory, ACEP and other pro-abortion activist organizations are once again fearmongering about women losing access to emergency care for actual complications.
“It is shameful that abortion activists at ACEP are intentionally conflating elective abortion of a healthy fetus with life-saving medical and surgical procedures to save a woman with a non-viable ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage,” Dr. Jared Ross, an emergency room physician in Missouri, told The Federalist.
Upon the Trump administration’s revocation in early June, ACEP President Alison Haddock said, “EMTALA ensures that we can provide stabilizing care to any patient who needs it, including pregnant patients experiencing medical emergencies, and it’s more important than ever that we have its backing for our evidence-based medical decisions.”
Despite the deliberate lack of gendered language (ACEP apparently refuses to use “mother” or “woman” when referring to pregnant women), Haddock’s statement makes it sound like the Trump administration’s move puts emergency care for complications in pregnancy at risk.
Ross, however, said that abortion is “never a treatment for any life-threatening condition,” adding that “an ectopic pregnancy is treated with a salpingostomy. A miscarriage is treated with a D&C (dilation and curettage).”
Haddock reiterated her fearmongering in a more dire way in late July, stating, “We are facing significant uncertainty about situations where it appears that there is a tension between state law and federal law — a state law banning pregnancy termination even when it may be treatment for an emergency medical condition, and federal EMTALA law saying that stabilizing treatment always has to be provided.”
Biden’s EMTALA move was always an attempt to create a loophole to bypass states that decided to stop the systematic murder of unborn babies. Abortions are not required to treat actual emergencies, despite what Haddock would have women believe — but the goal of people like Haddock is not to protect women, but rather scare women into thinking their potential pregnancy complications might not be able to be treated unless abortion is completely legal up until the moment of birth.
“Legally speaking, it doesn’t feel like we ended up in a much different place, but the challenges for emergency physicians persist in situations when they see a patient for whom pregnancy termination is a necessary part of the treatment plan, but they are worried that it could conflict with state law that could criminalize them for providing that treatment,” Haddock said, again refusing to recognize that only women can get pregnant, and using careful phrasing to make it sound like she is talking about abortion, when in reality she is not.
Technically, an ectopic pregnancy is “terminated,” but that pregnancy was never viable to begin with because the embryo embedded somewhere outside the uterus, commonly in the fallopian tube, where it cannot survive, and will also put the life of the mother at risk. Terminated? Yes. Abortion? Certainly not.
Others also parroted the lie, including Dr. Kimberly Chernoby, an emergency physician at George Washington University Medical Center who also serves as senior counsel for “reproductive rights” and health at the National Women’s Law Center. (Interestingly, her organization’s name does acknowledge the existence of women).
“We have all trained and practiced for decades, and we know how to take care of our patients and how to do the right thing, because their lives literally depend on it,” Chernoby said. “But these laws put emergency physicians in an impossible position.”
She also posed a bizarre scenario where an emergency doctor would have to call a lawyer or a magistrate to get approval for emergency care, once again conflating abortion with actual health care.
“No one wants to be calling your hospital general counsel or a magistrate judge at 2 a.m. to get an order to provide emergency care,” she stated. “Having a plan of care already established for common circumstances, such as ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, and PPROM [preterm premature rupture of membranes] can help ensure that you don’t find yourself providing substandard care to your patients and possibly on the receiving end of an EMTALA violation because you were afraid of violating a state law.”
Abortion activists who are in charge of certain medical associations, like the ACEP, the American Medical Association, and others, have been working tirelessly to sell the lie that abortion is a necessary part of women’s health care, and the Biden administration was a willing participant in that.
The Trump administration, however, recognizes that abortion is a totally elective procedure that is not required to treat any pregnancy complication.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
