_portrait.jpg){kind=link}
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
1157 points (98.5% liked)
Leopards Ate My Face
3441 readers
1377 users here now
Rules:
- If you don't already have some understanding of what this is, try reading this post. Off-topic posts will be removed.
- Please use a high-quality source to explain why your post fits if you think it might not be common knowledge and isn't explained within the post itself.
- Links to articles should be high-quality sources – for example, not the Daily Mail, the New York Post, Newsweek, etc. For a rough idea, check out this list. If it's marked in red, it probably isn't allowed; if it's yellow, exercise caution.
- The mods are fallible; if you've been banned or had a comment removed, you're encouraged to appeal it.
- For accessibility reasons, an image of text must either have alt text or a transcription in the comments.
- All Lemmy.World Terms of Service apply.
Also feel free to check out !leopardsatemyface@lemm.ee (also active).
Icon credit C. Brück on Wikimedia Commons.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This was a string of malpractices. The Missouri law didn't prohibit an abortion in this case, but it was incorrectly judged by the doctors/their legal staff. The law allows abortions in case of a medical emergency - which this was.
From your link:
"At the time of the discussion, Farmer was medically stable, with some vaginal bleeding that was not heavy. “Therefore contrary to the most appropriate management based (sic) my medical opinion, due to the legal language of MO law, we are unable to offer induction of labor at this time,” the report quotes the specialist as saying."
So yes, the law did prevent an abortion and endangered her life.
She is suing because she expected an exception for herself.
According to the HHS secretary:
Medical errors are a serious issue in the US, harming over 400,000 people and killing over 200,000 in a single year. This is a clear-cut example of a harmful medical error.
This is not a medical error. EMTALA is not a protective law for healthcare facilities or professionals. The state can still prosecute based on their own laws, and in Texas, for example, performing an abortion can come with a lifetime sentence.
From the medical provider and hospitals standpoint, you are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Perform an abortion and face criminal charges from the state or refrain and face civil charges from the fed.
If you had the choice to face a criminal charge (prison sentence) or a civil charge (fine), which would you pick?
If a state tried to convinct someone of providing an emergency abortion, the federal government's law would supercede the law prohibiting emergency abortions (which doesn't exist). Your statement about legal threats would only make sense if a significant number of doctors had been convicted, or even just charged, of an unlawful abortion despite claiming it was an emergency. So far, nobody has.
As it stands, there is no risk of criminal charges. Your choice doesn't exist.
Which federal law are you referring to? EMTALA does not supersede state law, nor does it prevent the state from pursuing criminal charges for abortion.
It's unrealistic to expect a significant number of doctors to throw away their livelihoods and go to prison to prove a legal threat. Doctors are being advised by risk management divisions of the hospital to not even consider abortions in these cases (in certain states) because it means saying goodbye to your practice, your savings, and your family.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/02/texas-abortion-fifth-circuit/
EMTALA supercedes state law because it is federal law. This is standard legal doctrine.
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.
There's literally less legal danger in performing an emergency abortion/premature delivery in a ban state than in shoplifting $500 of merchandise in San Francisco. The doctors who have done the post-Dobbs abortions have clearly done the calculus and found this to be the case. Nobody has been or needs to be "sacrificed."
Texas disagrees. Please see above source.
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?
Texas abortion law protects emergency abortions. The lawsuit was about an expansion of the definition of "emergency" justified by EMTALA. From the decision, quoted from the article:
Nobody is risking their livelihood by performing abortions because there is no legal risk for performing them in emergencies. How many prosecutions of emergency abortions since Dobbs - not threats of prosecution, because those have no teeth - can you find? Or any prosecutions at all? And here is my source for the hundreds of abortions figure.
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.
Your entire argument is founded on paranoid conjecture.
She was admitted to the hospital ER, kept overnight, and released without treatment. She was at risk of severe injury or death if she didn't receive appropriate treatment. Per the HHS secretary, "While many state laws have recently changed, it’s important to know that the federal EMTALA requirements have not changed, and continue to require that healthcare professionals offer treatment, including abortion care, that the provider reasonably determines is necessary to stabilize the patient’s emergency medical condition." Therefore, the hospitals are liable for not providing essential care.
"Life-threatening" is somewhat subjective, and doctors can be charged for providing non-emergency abortions. However, no doctors have been charged post-Dobbs with providing any abortions at all, therefore there is no meaningful risk of prosecution in emergency cases. If I was a doctor in such a situation, I wouldn't hesitate to provide the necessary care if I believed there was an emergency.
Nobody has been charged in post-Dobbs Texas for providing emergency abortions, or any at all. The law is working as intended.
The medical error is in believing that the law restricts doctors from performing life-and-limb-saving procedures. That leads to negligence, as in this case.
I'm going to leave it at this: Doctors and lawyers know more about this than you or I do and it borders on conspiracy peddling to think that not saving a life is being done through simple negligence here.
That particular case needs to be fleshed out in court and may well be an anomaly but there's a reason she is not the only one and the source of that is in the legislature.
Yes, which is why multiple doctors and lawyers have given the okay to provide pre-birth medical procedures. There's no tangible legal threat involved. She may never have her health back, but I hope the hospital is held responsible for what happened.