The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a Biden-era policy interpreting emergency medicine statutes as effectively requiring physicians to perform abortions in states with laws prohibiting elective abortion.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, headed by Dr. Mehmet Oz, said in a press release it was rolling back Biden administration-issued guidance interpreting the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, as contrary to laws in more than half of the states prohibiting abortion.
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EMTALA requires hospitals that receive federal Medicare funding to provide all patients “medical screening, examination, stabilizing treatment, and transfer if necessary.” The nearly 40-year-old law was passed following prominent cases where women in labor were turned away from hospitals due to not having health insurance.
Shortly after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra issued sweeping guidance on EMTALA requiring physicians to provide abortion under emergency medical conditions if it is “the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition,” irrespective of state laws prohibiting the procedure.
Anti-abortion advocates argued the guidance was unnecessary, noting that the laws in 25 states that prohibit elective abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy or before include exceptions for life-threatening emergencies, such as ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage.
However, Democrats argued that state laws prohibiting abortion enacted following the overturning of Roe put women experiencing severe pregnancy complications at risk, highlighting cases where doctors, confused about new state statutes, did not perform life-saving procedures.
Marjorie Dannefelser, president of the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, called Oz’s move “another win for life and truth, stopping Biden’s attack on emergency care for both pregnant moms and their unborn children.”
“It is a clear fact that pregnant women are protected under pro-life laws. Women can receive care for a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and any medical emergency in all 50 states,” Dannefelser said. “Democrats have created confusion on this fact to justify their extremely unpopular agenda for all-trimester abortion.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi in March dropped the Biden administration’s case against Idaho’s anti-abortion statute, one of the most restrictive in the country, with only narrow exceptions for life-threatening circumstances for the mother. Last year, the Supreme Court denied Idaho’s petition for redress in the case, allowing a lower court’s ruling to stand while the matter worked its way up the judicial ladder.
Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal advocacy group that assisted Idaho in its case against the Biden administration, on Tuesday dropped its parallel lawsuit against the Trump administration, representing the Catholic Medical Association, opposing the now-rescinded Becerra-era guidance.
“Doctors — especially in emergency rooms — are tasked with preserving life,” ADF Senior Counsel Matt Bowman said in a press statement. “The Trump administration has rolled back a harmful Biden-era mandate that compelled doctors to end unborn lives, in violation of their deeply held beliefs.”
Roger Severino, former HHS director of the Office of Civil Rights, said in response to the new development, “A stain on America’s conscience is now gone.”
“President Trump promised to dismantle the abortion radicalism left by his predecessor and today another abortion mandate bites the dust,” Severino said on X. “Wide majorities of Americans oppose forcing doctors and hospitals to take innocent human life and this change goes back to respecting conscience and the rule of law.”
The relationship between the Trump administration and anti-abortion advocates has been somewhat strained since the 2024 campaign, when Trump chose to distance himself from abortion policy at the federal level, including by removing long-standing anti-abortion language from the Republican platform.
However, changing the EMTALA regulations marked the second victory on Tuesday for anti-abortion advocates.
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On Tuesday morning, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary committed to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to conduct a review of the safety data on the abortion pill mifepristone, which has been a key target of the anti-abortion lobby since the fall of Roe.
Trump and fellow Republicans have pushed a handful of other anti-abortion agenda points through in the first six months of the administration, including releasing federal prisoners convicted of violating anti-intimidation statutes outside of abortion clinics and adding federal defunding of Planned Parenthood into the 2026 budget reconciliation bill.