UltraViolet Responds to EMTALA Unofficial Ruling: Court Fails to Affirm Right to Emergency Care for Pregnant People
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 26, 2025
CONTACT: Brett Abrams | brett@unbendablemedia.com
UltraViolet Responds to EMTALA Unofficial Ruling: Court Fails to Affirm Right to Emergency Care for Pregnant People
Statement from Nicole Regalado, Vice President of Campaigns, at UltraViolet, the nation’s largest online feminist organization:
After what appears to be a copy of the U.S. Supreme Court’s EMTALA ruling was published briefly on the Court’s website today, we at UltraViolet are outraged that the Republican-stacked Court would dismiss this opportunity to make clear that pregnant people in crisis have the right to receive emergency abortion care, not just to save their lives, but to prevent grave bodily harm, future infertility, and significant mental health consequences. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in the apparent ruling, this decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho or other states with abortion bans, it’s merely a delay.
Ensuring that the law does not force medical providers to deny life-saving treatment to pregnant patients who require emergency abortion care is crucial. However, in practice, it is extremely difficult for doctors to navigate emergency abortion exceptions for the “health of the mother,” and people still face serious risks while pregnant when denied full access to abortion.
The fact that the EMTALA case made it to the highest court demonstrates just how radical the Christian nationalist agenda is, how far these extremists are willing to go to end abortion access, and why it is absolutely critical that we defend our right to bodily autonomy on all fronts. We must hold accountable the corporations funding the MAGA Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) whose members have brought this and many other cases to decimate abortion access. We must squash federal and state laws restricting abortion rights, and we must establish equal rights under the Constitution so that no one faces sex- or gender-based discrimination in health care decisions.
EMTALA was implemented to ensure that any person in need of emergency medical care could access it, regardless of their financial situation. We know that anti-abortion politicians brought this case to the Supreme Court because abortion IS a form of emergency medical care. They know that, and we know that. This is the second time in two years that a Supreme Court ruling on abortion care has been divulged before official release.
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