The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are currently investigating two hospitals in Missouri and Kansas that violated federal law by refusing to provide an emergency abortion to a woman who was experiencing premature labor, according to The Associated Press.
The woman, Mylissa Farmer, was forced to travel to Illinois to terminate her pregnancy, despite the risk of serious infection or losing her uterus if she did not undergo an abortion.
“It was dehumanizing. It was terrifying. It was horrible not to get the care to save your life,” Farmer told The Associated Press.
The National Women’s Law Center filed complaints with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, launching the agency’s investigation into the hospitals that refused to provide Farmer with emergency care.
Xavier Becerra, the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, said on Monday that the two hospitals violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which mandates that states provide access to emergency services regardless of contradictory state laws.
“As we have made explicitly clear: we will use the full extent of our legal authority, consistent with orders from the courts, to enforce protections for individuals who seek emergency care – including when that care is an abortion,” Becerra said in a statement.
While abortion is legal in Kansas until up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, Missouri is one of 24 states that banned or severely restricted abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of 2022. Though Missouri’s abortion ban makes exceptions if a pregnant person’s life is in danger, and federal law requires doctors to provide patients with abortions in emergencies, many practitioners have refused to provide emergency abortions out of fear of losing their licenses or facing criminal charges. In Kansas, a new law that will take effect on July 1 could result in health care providers who perform abortions facing felony charges.
“The Missouri statute puts doctors and providers between a rock and a hard place,” Genevieve Scott, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told KFF Health News. “It creates an extreme deterrent to providing care in medical emergencies, given the risk of providers facing prosecution and losing their livelihood. That clearly threatens the health and lives of every pregnant person in the state.”
This isn’t the first time that Missouri hospitals have been investigated for violating EMTALA. In October of 2022, a woman whose water broke early had to leave the state to receive an abortion after Missouri hospitals refused to let doctors provide her with abortion care.
Missouri and Kansas are not the only states where pregnant people have been denied abortions in violation of federal law — similar cases have been documented in West Virginia, Texas and Idaho.
“Today, we send a reminder to hospitals participating in Medicare: you are obligated under EMTALA to offer stabilizing care to patients who need emergency care, and we will not hesitate to enforce your obligations under the law,” Becerra said in his statement.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.