Decisions about pregnancy should not be made by courts

The U.S. Supreme Court is once again taking up abortion, this time in a case deciding whether state-level abortion bans can override federal protections for pregnant people and stop doctors from providing life-saving emergency medical care.

At the center of the case is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a nearly 40-year-old federal law guaranteeing everyone treatment for emergency medical conditions, nationwide. Anti-abortion extremists are arguing that in states where abortion is banned or severely restricted, those bans should override the law’s long-standing protections. They would rather let a pregnant person die or suffer than allow doctors to provide them with the emergency abortion care they urgently need.

These extremists know exactly what they’re doing — after all, they’ve seen countless brave women across the country come forward to tell the stories of the horrific and dangerous scenarios that abortion bans have put them in.

In Texas, for example, Amanda Zurawski was denied the emergency medical care she needed while pregnant, eventually putting her in the intensive care unit and in sepsis.

Addressing U.S. senators in a hearing last year, she told them that because of these anti-abortion policies, “I nearly died.”

That cruelty is the point of these bans. This is part of their broader strategy to ban all abortion for any reason, no matter the consequences for real people and their health and lives. They are willing to do absolutely anything to make it happen.

In the 21 states that have banned or restricted abortion care — including our neighboring state of Idaho, where this case originated — pregnant people are being forced to the brink of death before doctors can provide them with the care they desperately need.

Now, this case could mean that these abortion bans can override federal law in order to stop doctors from providing emergency medical care to pregnant people. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of anti-abortion extremists, that will be a decision felt nationwide, including here in our state. In Nevada, we continue to work hard to guarantee abortion is legal and accessible — making sure we add permanent protections for abortion care in our state constitution. But the truth is that without federal protections in place that guarantee everyone a right to abortion, we are all always at the mercy of our courts and extremist politicians.

The vast majority of Nevadans, 4 in 5, support the right to abortion and want the government to stay out of decisions about it. And nationwide, 85% of Americans, across party lines, support access to emergency abortion care — including 89% of Democrats, 88% of independents and 77% of Republicans.

We believe that a patient’s health should always come first and that everybody should have the freedom to access the life-saving medical care they need, free from political interference.

This November, we’ll have another chance to tell our leaders exactly that.

With Republican politicians using every tool at their disposal — including the courts — to further eviscerate abortion access, the stakes are too high to sit on the sidelines. That’s why Reproductive Freedom for All Nevada and our members are mobilizing to ensure reproductive freedom champions are elected from the statehouse to the White House.

We are in a crisis, and our best chance to fight back is to elect majorities in Congress who will vote to restore the federal right to abortion and expand access and ensure that President Joe Biden is in the White House to sign it into law.

And we can’t stop there — we have a crucial opportunity to lock the right to abortion into our state constitution this November, and we must seize it.

Decisions about pregnancy and abortion should be made by the person who is pregnant and their doctor, not politicians or the Supreme Court. Whether or not you can get the emergency medical care you need shouldn’t depend on your ZIP code. Now let’s get to work to ensure that’s a reality for all of us.