Ted Cruz argued that states should ban emergency abortions

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz complained during Tuesday night’s debate against his Democratic challenger, Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), that people should stop asking him whether he would support exceptions to Texas’ extreme abortion restrictions.

Texas has some of the most extreme anti-abortion laws in the country. In its current form, the law contains no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, and earlier this month the Supreme Court allowed Texas to implement an effective ban on emergency abortions, even in hospitals.

It turns out that Cruz has quietly thrown his support behind a right-wing push for the Supreme Court, which would have essentially stripped doctors of the right to perform emergency abortions at hospitals across the country. Cruz was one of 26 U.S. senators who joined an amicus curiae supporting Republican Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador in his effort to reject a Biden administration directive requiring emergency rooms to provide necessary abortion care to provide to patients.

In the aftermath of Roe to Wade’s After my death, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance warning hospitals that they were required to “provide stabilizing medical treatment to your pregnant patients,” including abortion care, “regardless of state restrictions.” The directive was based on provisions of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a Reagan-era law that required hospital emergency departments to treat individuals seeking care regardless of their ability to pay, citizenship, or demographics.

“The DOJ seeks to provide protection against electively induced abortion. Yet EMTALA does not mention abortion once, and a proper interpretation shows that the statute does not require ‘stabilizing’ abortions,” the amicus brief states.

“Idaho law is consistent with EMTALA because it does not restrict medically indicated separations between mothers and fetuses,” the letter adds. “That is why the DOJ is trying to create a health exception for emergency room physicians to perform elective induced abortions, which does not treat the unborn child as a second patient and in fact directly harms the child.”

Although Idaho’s abortion laws provide an exception for cases where the mother’s health and life are at risk, the language of the statutes is vague. Doctors in the state must juggle their responsibility to their patients with the threat that they could be charged with malfeasance if their reasoning for terminating a patient’s pregnancy does not satisfy the state government.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Idaho, but declined to intervene earlier this month in Texas, where the state can now enforce a ban on emergency room abortions and continue to threaten doctors — all to the detriment of their patients.

“It is indefensible that Texas women are being turned away from hospitals, left bleeding in their cars and waiting rooms and found by their husbands,” Allred told Cruz during their debate on Tuesday. “Suddenly, the protector of women and girls will be Senator Cruz, who thinks it is perfectly reasonable that if a girl is raped by a relative of hers, a victim of incest, she should be forced to carry that child. to term and give birth. You think that’s perfectly reasonable, but now you’re going to position yourself as a protector of women and girls. It’s laughable.”

The race between Allred and Cruz is too close for the incumbent senator’s comfort, with some polls giving Cruz just a single-digit lead over his challenger. If Allred succeeds in calming the unrest, the race could tilt control of the Senate in Democrats’ favor. Texas lawmakers have taken it upon themselves to become leaders in the Republican Party’s project to strip women across the country of their reproductive rights, and as women in the state push to restore their bodily autonomy, Cruz has not response to his own record. He just wants everyone to stop asking.