In June 2025, the Trump administration's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rescinded Biden-era guidance that had reaffirmed hospitals' obligation, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), to provide stabilizing emergency abortion care, even in states with near-total bans.
EMTALA is the 1986 federal law requiring hospitals that participate in Medicare to stabilize any patient in a medical emergency. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, HHS issued guidance making explicit that this stabilizing duty can include an emergency abortion when that is the appropriate treatment, even where state law bans the procedure.
Rescinding the guidance does not by itself change hospitals' underlying legal obligations under EMTALA, which remains in force. But reproductive-rights and medical groups, including the ACLU and the National Women's Law Center, said removing the federal reassurance adds to the fear, confusion, and dangerous delays that doctors and patients have faced since Roe fell, leaving individual hospitals to decide whether a given emergency qualifies for care under their state's ban. (Gap-fill: this June 2025 action was not previously in the tracker.)