During a recent case in the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito presented a textualist argument that has sparked substantial debate in legal spheres. Renowned as a rigorous textualist, the argument revolved around the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a legislation from the Reagan era that requires hospitals accepting Medicare funds to provide emergency medical treatment to anyone coming to the emergency room.
The Act was enacted to prevent hospitals from denying service to patients who were suspected of not be able to afford treatment. A key provision of the Act also requires hospitals to carry out abortions if it is medically necessary to protect a patient from death or substantive physical harm, superseding any state law that contradicts this provision. The overarching principle is that states have to yield to federal law under emergency conditions or else stop receiving Medicare.
However, Alito attempts a different interpretation during an oral argument, presented what skeptics are calling “one of the dumbest textualist arguments” in court history. Alito centered his argument on EMTALA’s use of the phrase “unborn child”, questioning why legislation mandating the the performance of abortions would utilize such a term.
Responding to his query, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar explained the terminology’s relevance by looking at the time when the legislation was enacted, recalling circumstances of when hospitals were refusing to treat fetuses in grave distress if the mother’s health wasn’t in danger. This led to the legislation’s specification that hospitals had to provide emergency services even when a fetus was in severe distress.
Further, Alito posed questions about scenarios where the “emergency medical condition” posed a direct threat to the unborn child, suggesting an inherent contradiction between treating the emergency condition and the obligation to perform an abortion. Critics argue that this line of argument attempts to twist the Act’s original mandate into a forced obligation on services for a patient, which is not supported in the actual text of the statute. This case sparks an ongoing dialogue among legal professionals on textual interpretations and their implications on healthcare policies.
This story was first reported by Above The Law.