Senate chairman demands answers from emergency rooms that denied care to pregnant patients

[September 25, 2024]  By AMANDA SEITZ

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hospitals are facing questions about why they denied care to pregnant patients and whether state abortion bans have influenced how they treat those patients.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent inquiries to nine hospitals ahead of a hearing Tuesday looking at whether abortion bans have prevented or delayed pregnant women from getting help during their miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or other medical emergencies.

He is part of a Democratic effort to focus the nation's attention on the stories of women who have faced horrible realities since some states tightened a patchwork of abortion laws. The strict laws are injecting chaos and hesitation into the emergency room, Wyden said during Tuesday's hearing.

“Some states that have passed abortion bans into law claim that they contain exceptions if a woman’s life is at risk,” Wyden said. “In reality, these exceptions are forcing doctors to play lawyer. And lawyer to play doctor. Providers are scrambling to make impossible decisions between providing critical care or a potential jail sentence.”

Republicans on Tuesday assailed the hearing, with outright denials about the impact abortion laws have on the medical care women in the U.S. have received, and called the hearing a politically-motivated attack just weeks ahead of the presidential election. Republicans, who are noticeably nervous about how the new abortion laws will play into the presidential race, lodged repeated complaints about the hearing's title, “How Trump Criminalized Women's Health Care."

“Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the overtly partisan nature of the title, it appears that the purpose of today’s hearing is to score political points against the former president," said Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, a Republican.

A federal law requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care for patients, a mandate that the Biden administration argues includes abortions needed to save the health or life of a woman. But anti-abortion advocates have argued that the law also requires hospitals to stabilize a fetus, too. The Senate Finance Committee comes into play because it oversees Medicare funding, which can be yanked when a hospital violates the federal law.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill, March 20, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)

The Associated Press has reported that more than 100 women have been denied care in emergency rooms across the country since 2022. The women were turned away in states with and without strict abortion bans, but doctors in Florida and Missouri, for example, detailed in some cases they could not give patients the treatment they needed because of the state’s abortion bans. Wyden sent letters to four of the hospitals that were included in the AP's reports, as well as a hospital at the center of a ProPublica report that found a Georgia woman died after doctors delayed her treatment.

Reports of women being turned away, several Republicans argued, are the result of misinformation or misunderstanding of abortion laws.

OB-GYN Amelia Huntsberger told the committee that she became very familiar with Idaho's abortion law, which initially only allowed for abortions if a woman was at risk for death, when it went into effect in 2022. So did her husband, an emergency room doctor. A year ago, they packed and moved their family to Oregon as a result.

“It was clear that it was inevitable: if we stayed in Idaho, at some point there would be conflict between what a patient needed and what the laws would allow for," Huntsberger said.

Huntsberger is not alone. Idaho has lost nearly 50 OB-GYNs since the state's abortion ban was put into place.

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