The Trump Administration has added to the confusion surrounding the U.S.’s shifting patchwork of abortion laws by rescinding Biden-era guidance that directed hospitals to provide abortions in emergency situations, even in states where abortion is restricted. The decision, announced on Tuesday, does not change the federal law that was at the heart of the Biden Administration’s guidance: the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding—which is most of them—to provide stabilizing treatment to patients experiencing medical emergencies or transfer them to a hospital that can.

Advertisement Advertisement

The Trump Administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said in a press release that it “will continue to enforce EMTALA, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.” But the agency also said that it “will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.” Doctors and abortion-rights advocates, however, said they feared that the Administration’s move will amplify confusion over whether doctors can provide critical care, thereby putting lives at risk. Dr. Jamila Perritt—an ob-gyn in Washington, D.C., and the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health—said in a press release that rescinding the Biden-era guidance would force “providers like me to choose between caring for someone in their time of need and turning my back on them to comply with cruel and dangerous laws.”

Advertisement

“This action sends a clear message: the lives and health of pregnant people are not worth protecting,” Perritt said. What was the Biden-era guidance? The Biden Administration issued the guidance after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, reminding hospitals of their “obligations” under EMTALA, as state laws restricting or banning abortion began going into effect. “Any state actions against a physician who provides an abortion in order to stabilize an emergency medical condition in a pregnant individual presenting to the hospital would be preempted by the federal EMTALA statute due to the direct conflict with the ‘stabilized’ provision of the statute,” the guidance stressed. “Moreover, EMTALA contains a whistleblower provision that prevents retaliation by the hospital against any hospital employee or physician who refuses to transfer a patient with an emergency medical condition that has not been stabilized by the initial hospital, such as a patient with an emergent ectopic pregnancy, or a patient with an incomplete medical abortion.”

Advertisement

The guidance also said that physicians’ fear of violating state laws prohibiting abortion could not be used as the basis for transferring a patient. “When a direct conflict occurs between EMTALA and a state law, EMTALA must be followed,” the guidance stated. How will rescinding the guidance impact care? EMTALA remains in place despite the change in the guidance. The Trump Administration did not explicitly advise hospitals that they could deny patients abortions in emergency situations. CMS did specify in the memo announcing the revocation that the Department of Health and Human Services may not enforce the interpretation in the Biden Administration’s guidance that EMTALA preempts Texas’ near-total abortion ban, pointing to court rulings that have temporarily blocked the guidance in the state. But abortion-rights advocates sharply criticized the Trump Administration’s move, saying it endangers the lives of pregnant people.

Advertisement

“The Trump Administration would rather women die in emergency rooms than receive life-saving abortions,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a press release. “In pulling back guidance, this administration is feeding the fear and confusion that already exists at hospitals in every state where abortion is banned. Hospitals need more guidance right now, not less.” “We’re making our health care professionals have to operate in a gray area when their work really needs to be clear,” says Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, a reproductive justice collective. “They’re in the business of providing life-saving care to people on a daily basis, and they don’t need to be put in a position where their decision making is compromised.” When that confusion happens, she says, “people die.” Simpson says that, for states that have banned or restricted abortion, like her home state of Georgia, rescinding the Biden-era guidance is “just going to make things worse.”

Advertisement

“It’s making it incredibly scary for the American people and pregnant folks who would need access to emergency services,” Simpson says. “People’s lives are at stake.” Anti-abortion groups, meanwhile, celebrated the move. “The Trump administration has delivered another win for life and truth – stopping Biden’s attack on emergency care for both pregnant moms and their unborn children,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a press release. She accused Democrats of creating confusion about people’s access to care in medical emergencies, including miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. “In situations where every minute counts, their lies lead to delayed care and put women in needless, unacceptable danger,” she said. Previously, the Biden Administration had sued Idaho over its near-total abortion ban, saying that the state’s restrictions conflicted with EMTALA. In March, the Trump Administration dropped the lawsuit.

Advertisement

More than a dozen states have banned abortion in almost all cases or after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people even know they’re pregnant. There have been many reports of pregnant people experiencing complications being turned away from hospitals in states that have banned abortion. Federal officials recently completed investigations into complaints two such women filed during the Biden Administration, alleging that the hospitals that denied them care violated EMTALA. Investigators found that the Texas hospital that denied Kyleigh Thurman care while she was bleeding and experiencing an ectopic pregnancy—a condition that can be life-threatening—a few months after the state enacted its abortion ban violated EMTALA, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday. In the second case, meanwhile, TIME learned Wednesday that investigators determined that the Arizona hospital that denied Wendy Simmons care while she was experiencing a complication called preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes (PPROM) while the state had a 15-week abortion ban in place did not violate EMTALA.

Advertisement

Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights who represented both Thurman and Simmons, says that while EMTALA is “a powerful tool” to preserve emergency abortion access, “it really is not enough to protect every patient around the country,” particularly in states with abortion bans and restrictions. Duane adds that the Trump Administration’s move to rescind the Biden-era guidance on EMTALA, in addition to the “conflicting results” in Thurman’s and Simmons’ cases, will only continue “to sow confusion among doctors and hospitals.”

“This is a really troubling sign that the Trump Administration rescinded that guidance, but, at least for the moment, EMTALA is still the law of the land, and we at the Center for Reproductive Rights fully expect for hospitals and doctors around the country to do as much as they can to protect patients, and we expect and hope that the governments of their states will do the same,” Duane says.

This is an adapted excerpt from the June 8 episode of “Velshi.”

We may have just entered the most dangerous chapter of the post-Roe era to date. With new, but little-noticed, developments over recent days, it’s apparent that not only are women under greater threat of being criminalized for their pregnancies, but the health and lives of pregnant women are more endangered now than at any time since the Dobbs decision was handed down.

The health and lives of pregnant women are more endangered now than at any time since the Dobbs decision was handed down.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision, draconian abortion bans have been enacted in more than a dozen states. We have seen the deadly impact of those bans. In Georgia, Amber Thurman died of sepsis after not receiving an abortion procedure, known as dilation and curettage, that could have saved her life. Also in Georgia, Candi Miller died after she was too afraid to seek medical care because of the state’s abortion ban.

In Texas, Josseli Barnica, Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain all died after being denied proper care following miscarriages. And in the same state, Kylie Thurman lost part of her reproductive system after being turned away from a Texas hospital with an ectopic pregnancy. These are just some of the cases we know about.

To put it quite simply: Abortion is health care, emergency abortion is emergency health care — and without it, women die.

Despite that fact, last week the Trump administration revoked guidance issued by the Biden administration that directed hospitals to provide emergency abortions to women regardless of a state’s abortion laws.

So why would the Trump administration want to come after emergency abortions specifically? The ones where, if you don’t get them, you could die? Well, University of California, Davis law professor Mary Ziegler has a theory. She notes that the new guidance from the Trump administration does not just revoke the Biden-era guidance on providing emergency abortions, it also suggests that hospitals are required to protect the health of a pregnant woman’s “unborn child.”

This, Ziegler suggests, hints at a broader anti-abortion strategy. As she writes in a new piece for MSNBC: “In the longer term, the end of the Biden-era guidance may be the tip of the sword further carving up abortion protections, even in states where that right is still protected.”

So not only is it dangerous to experience a pregnancy complication in the wrong state, it’s likely to get more complicated even if you live in a “safe” state.

But that is not even the end of the alarming trends in anti-abortion zealotry. Miscarriage is the most common pregnancy complication in America, affecting up to 1 in 5 pregnancies, according to the National Institutes of Health. And yet, since Dobbs was handed down, we have seen case after case of this common medical condition becoming a criminal investigation.

Mallori Patrice Strait spent five months in police custody after miscarrying in a public bathroom in Texas. Those charges were dropped, and an autopsy determined she had naturally miscarried a nonviable fetus.

Brittany Watts was arrested on felony corpse abuse charges in Ohio, for her miscarriage, which happened at home after she had been to a hospital with severe bleeding and was told her pregnancy was not viable. The charges against her were eventually dropped.

In Georgia, Selena Maria Chandler-Scott had a miscarriage and was arrested for disposing of the fetal tissue. Those charges were also dropped.

In South Carolina, Amari Marsh was accused of murder after losing her pregnancy. She was held in jail without bond for 22 days, ultimately released on house arrest with an ankle monitor. Thirteen months later, she was cleared by a grand jury.

Not only is it dangerous to experience a pregnancy complication in the wrong state, it’s likely to get more complicated even if you live in a “safe” state.

If you’re not following these stories closely, it might be tempting to think of each as a one-off: a bad arrest or a wrong judgment call. But make no mistake, this is systematic criminalization of women’s bodies — and they are saying it out loud.

Tom Truman, a prosecutor for Raleigh County, West Virginia, said that while he would be unwilling to charge a woman for her miscarriage, other prosecuting attorneys in the state have discussed the possibility. Speaking to a local news outlet, Truman advised that if women who miscarry want to avoid arrest, they should call authorities to tell them that their pregnancy has ended.

“Call your doctor. Call law enforcement, or 911, and just say, ‘I miscarried. I want you to know,’” Truman said. “‘Isn’t there a difference between somebody that’s eight months pregnant and nine weeks pregnant?’ … Those are going to be decisions that are going to have to be parsed out.”

Strict abortion bans could turn a common medical outcome, one that only happens to pregnant women, into a matter for the police. The idea is that you are supposed to call 911 if you have a miscarriage at home so that it can be investigated as a crime. This is America in 2025.

For Brianna Henderson, birth control isn’t just about preventing pregnancy.

The Texas mother of two was diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal heart condition after having her second child. In addition to avoiding another pregnancy that could be life-threatening, Henderson has to make sure the contraception she uses doesn’t jeopardize her health.

For more than a decade, a small team of people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked to do just that, issuing national guidelines for clinicians on how to prescribe contraception safely for millions of women with underlying medical conditions — including heart disease, lupus, sickle cell disease, and obesity. But the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, fired those workers as part of the Trump administration’s rapid downsizing of the federal workforce.

It also decimated the CDC’s larger Division of Reproductive Health, where the team was housed — a move that clinicians, advocacy groups, and fired workers say will endanger the health of women and their babies.

Clinicians said in interviews that counseling patients about birth control and prescribing it is relatively straightforward. But for women with conditions that put them at higher risk of serious health complications, special care is needed.

“We really were the only source of safety monitoring in this country,” said one fired CDC staffer who worked on the guidelines, known as the U.S. Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use, or MEC. “There’s no one who can actually do this work.” KFF Health News agreed not to name this worker and others who were not authorized to speak to the press and feared retaliation.

The stakes are high for people like Henderson. About six weeks after having her second baby, she said, her heart “was racing.”

Brianna Henderson, a Texas mother of two, was diagnosed with an uncommon type of heart failure after having her second child and now uses a type of contraception that, according to CDC guidelines, won’t put her health at risk. Desiree Rios for KFF Health News

“I feel like I’m underwater,” Henderson said. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” She eventually went to the hospital, where she was told she was “in full-blown heart failure,” she said.

Henderson was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy, an uncommon type of heart failure that can happen toward the end of pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. Risk factors for the condition include being at least 30 years old, being of African descent, high blood pressure, and obesity.

The CDC contraception guidelines say that combined hormonal contraception, which contains both estrogen and progestin to prevent pregnancy, can pose an “unacceptable health risk” for most women with peripartum cardiomyopathy, also known as PPCM. For some women with the diagnosis, a birth control injection commonly known by the brand name Depo-Provera also carries risks that outweigh its benefits, the guidelines show. Progestin-only pills or a birth control implant, inserted into a person’s arm, are the safest.

Henderson said her cardiologist had to greenlight which contraception she could use. She uses a progestin-only birth control implant that’s more than 99% effective in preventing pregnancy.

“I didn’t know that certain things can cause blood clots,” Henderson said, “or make your heart failure worse.” Heart failure is a leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity in the U.S., with PPCM accounting for up to 70% of heart failure cases during pregnancy.

Sweeping HHS layoffs in late March and early April gutted the CDC’s reproductive health division, upending several programs designed to protect women and infants, three fired workers said.

About two-thirds of the division’s roughly 165 employees and contractors were cut, through firings, retirements, or reassignments to other parts of the agency, one worker said.

Among those fired were CDC staffers who carried out the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a survey established nearly 40 years ago to improve maternal and infant health outcomes by asking detailed questions of women who recently gave birth. The survey was used “to help inform and help reduce the contributing factors that cause maternal mortality and morbidity,” one fired worker said, by allowing government workers to examine the medical care people received before and during pregnancy, if any, and other risk factors that may lead to poor maternal and child health.

The firings also removed CDC workers who collected and analyzed data on in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments.

“They left nothing behind,” one worker said.

U.S. contraception guidelines were first published in 2010, after the CDC adapted guidance developed by the World Health Organization. The latest version was published in August 2024. It includes information about the safety of different types of contraception for more than 60 medical conditions. Clinicians said it is the premier source of evidence about the safety of birth control.

“It gave us so much information which was not available to clinicians at their fingertips,” said Michael Policar, a physician and professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine.

“If you’ve got a person with, let’s say, long-standing Type 2 diabetes, someone who has a connective-tissue disease like lupus, someone who’s got hypertension or maybe has been treated for a precursor to breast cancer — something like that? In those circumstances,” Policar said, “before the MEC it was really hard to know how to manage those people.”

The CDC updates the guidelines comprehensively roughly every five years. On a weekly basis, however, government workers would monitor evidence about patients’ use of contraception and the safety of various methods, something they were doing when HHS abruptly fired them this spring, two fired workers said. That work isn’t happening now, one of them said.

Sometimes the agency would issue interim changes outside the larger updates if new evidence warranted it. Now, if something new or urgent comes up, “there’s not going to be any way to update the guidelines,” one fired worker said.

In 2020, for example, the CDC revised its contraception recommendations for women at high risk of HIV infection, after new evidence showed that various methods were safer than previously thought.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard declined to say why CDC personnel working on the contraception guidelines and other reproductive health issues were fired, or answer other questions raised by KFF Health News’ reporting.

Most women of reproductive age in the U.S. use contraception. CDC data from 2019, the most recent available, shows that more than 47 million women ages 15 to 49 relied on birth control. About 1 in 10 used long-acting methods such as intrauterine devices and implants; 1 in 7 used oral contraception.

The latest guidelines included updated safety recommendations for women who have sickle cell disease, lupus, or PPCM, and those who are breastfeeding, among others. Clinicians are now being told that combined hormonal contraception poses an unacceptable health risk for women with sickle cell disease, because it might increase the risk of blood clots.

“It can really come down to life or death,” said Teonna Woolford, CEO of the Sickle Cell Reproductive Health Education Directive, a nonprofit that advocates for improved reproductive health care for people with the disease.

“We really saw the CDC guidelines as a win, as a victory — they’re actually going to pay attention,” she said.

The 2024 guidelines also for the first time included birth control recommendations for women with chronic kidney disease. Research has shown that such women are at higher risk of serious pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia and preterm delivery. Their medical condition also increases their risk of blood clots, which is why it’s important for them to not use combined hormonal contraception, fired CDC workers and clinicians said.

The CDC information “is the final say in safety,” said Patty Cason, a family nurse practitioner and president of Envision Sexual and Reproductive Health. Having only static information about the safety of various types of birth control is “very scary,” she said, because new evidence could come out and entirely new methods of contraception are being developed.

Henderson said it took her heart two years to recover. She created the nonprofit organization Let’s Talk PPCM to educate women about the type of heart failure she was diagnosed with, including what forms of birth control are safe.

“We don’t want blood clots, worsening heart failures,” Henderson said. “They already feel like they can’t trust their doctors, and we don’t need extra.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Texas hospital that repeatedly sent a woman who was bleeding and in pain home without ending her nonviable, life-threatening pregnancy violated the law, according to a newly released federal investigation.

The government’s findings, which have not been previously reported, were a small victory for 36-year-old Kyleigh Thurman, who ultimately lost part of her reproductive system after being discharged without any help from her hometown emergency room for her dangerous ectopic pregnancy.

But a new policy the Trump administration announced on Tuesday has thrown into doubt the federal government’s oversight of hospitals that deny women emergency abortions, even when they are at risk for serious infection, organ loss or severe hemorrhaging.

Thurman had hoped the federal government’s investigation, which issued a report in April after concluding its inquiry last year, would send a clear message that ectopic pregnancies must be treated by hospitals in Texas, which has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans.

“I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through this,” Thurman said in an interview with the Associated Press from her Texas home this week. “I put a lot of the responsibility on the state of Texas and policy makers and the legislators that set this chain of events off.”

Uncertainty regarding emergency abortion access

Women around the country have been denied emergency abortions for their life-threatening pregnancies after states swiftly enacted abortion restrictions in response to a 2022 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which includes three appointees of President Donald Trump.

The guidance issued by the Biden administration in 2022 was an effort to preserve access to emergency abortions for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies. It directed hospitals — even ones in states with severe restrictions — to provide abortions in those emergency cases. If hospitals did not comply, they would be in violation of a federal law and risk losing some federal funds.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the law and inspecting hospitals, announced it would revoke the Biden-era guidance around emergency abortions.

The law, which requires doctors to provide stabilizing treatment, was one of the few ways that Thurman was able to hold the emergency room accountable after she didn’t receive any help from staff at Ascension Seton Williamson in Round Rock, Texas in February of 2023, a few months after Texas enacted its strict abortion ban.

An ectopic pregnancy left untreated

Emergency room staff observed that Thurman’s hormone levels had dropped, a pregnancy was not visible in her uterus and a structure was blocking her fallopian tube — all telltale signs of an ectopic pregnancy, when a fetus implants outside of the uterus and has no room to grow. If left untreated, ectopic pregnancies can rupture, causing organ damage, hemorrhage or even death.

READ MORE: Brain-dead woman must carry fetus to birth because of Georgia’s abortion ban, hospital tells family

Thurman, however, was sent home and given a pamphlet on miscarriage for her first pregnancy. She returned three days later, still bleeding, and was given an injected drug intended to end the pregnancy, but it was too late. Days later, she showed up again at the emergency room, bleeding out because the fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it. She underwent an emergency surgery that removed part of her reproductive system.

CMS launched its investigation of how Ascension Seton Williamson handled Thurman’s case late last year, shortly after she filed a complaint. Investigators concluded the hospital failed to give her a proper medical screening exam, including an evaluation with an OB-GYN. The hospital violated the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to all patients. Thurman was “at risk for deterioration of her health and wellbeing as a result of an untreated medical condition,” the investigation said in its report, which was publicly released last month.

Ascension, a vast hospital system that has facilities across multiple states, did not respond to questions about Thurman’s case, saying only that it is “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”

Penalties for doctors, hospital staff

Doctors and legal experts have warned abortion restrictions like the one Texas enacted have discouraged emergency room staff from aborting dangerous and nonviable pregnancies, even when a woman’s life is imperiled. The stakes are especially high in Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years in prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion. Lawmakers in the state are weighing a law that would remove criminal penalties for doctors who provide abortions in certain medical emergencies.

“We see patients with miscarriages being denied care, bleeding out in parking lots. We see patients with nonviable pregnancies being told to continue those to term,” said Molly Duane, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights that represented Thurman. “This is not, maybe, what some people thought abortion bans would look like, but this is the reality.”

The Biden administration routinely warned hospitals that they need to provide abortions when a woman’s health was in jeopardy, even suing Idaho over its state law that initially prohibited nearly all abortions, unless a woman’s life was on the line.

Questions remain about hospital investigations

But CMS’ announcement on Tuesday raises questions about whether such investigations will continue if hospitals do not provide abortions for women in medical emergencies.

The agency said it will still enforce the law, “including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.”

While states like Texas have clarified that ectopic pregnancies can legally be treated with abortions, the laws do not provide for every complication that might arise during a pregnancy. Several women in Texas have sued the state for its law, which has prevented women from terminating pregnancies in cases where their fetuses had deadly fetal anomalies or they went into labor too early for the fetus to survive.

Thurman worries pregnant patients with serious complications still won’t be able to get the help they may need in Texas emergency rooms.

“You cannot predict the ways a pregnancy can go,” Thurman said. “It can happen to anyone, still. There’s still so many ways in which pregnancies that aren’t ectopic can be deadly.”

‘The Trump Administration would rather women die in emergency rooms than receive life-saving abortions,’ said Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on June 3 that, effective May 29, they had rescinded guidance on the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, a law that requires hospitals to stabilize emergent patients.

The guidance on EMTALA was initially issued in July 2022 by HHS under President Joe Biden after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. It affirmed that health care providers who carry out lifesaving abortions in emergency situations were protected under federal law, regardless of the laws of the state in which the procedures are carried out.

In August 2022, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging an abortion ban in Idaho, arguing that it violated EMTALA and put pregnant women’s lives in danger.

Within weeks of the filing, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill granted a preliminary injunction in the case that blocked enforcement of the Idaho law as it related to medical emergencies. A month later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued an order granting Idaho’s request to place a stay on the injunction to give the state a chance to appeal the decision. In January, the Supreme Court lifted the injunction completely and agreed to hear the DOJ’s case.

In March, the Department of Justice notified defendants it was dropping the suit, which advocates said was an early indication that the Trump administration had no intention of protecting pregnant people, even in cases of medical emergencies.

“For decades, EMTALA has protected the ability of all people, including those who are pregnant, to receive life and health saving, stabilizing care in emergency situations,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO for Democracy Forward, said in a statement sent to the American Independent.

“The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw EMTALA guidance guaranteeing pregnant people medical care in emergency situations will sow confusion for providers and endanger the lives and health of pregnant people. Every American deserves the right to access the necessary care in emergency scenarios, including pregnant people, without political interference,” Perryman said.

The announcement of the rescission was accompanied by a copy of a 2022 letter that had accompanied the guidance, with the word “RESCINDED” emblazoned in red across it.

The rescission announcement says, “CMS will continue to enforce EMTALA, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy. CMS will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”

“The Trump Administration would rather women die in emergency rooms than receive life-saving abortions,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “In pulling back guidance, this administration is feeding the fear and confusion that already exists at hospitals in every state where abortion is banned. Hospitals need more guidance right now, not less.”

Sara Spain, director of strategic communications for EMILYs List, an organization dedicated to electing Democratic women who support abortion rights, said in a statement: “Republicans are on a crusade to eliminate abortion access, and they’re happy to endanger our lives to do so. They were never going to leave abortion up to voters in the states; they are going to continue their assault on our lives and freedoms until they’re stripped of their power to do so. Mark my words, this cycle EMILYs List is going to take away that power.”

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement: “The Trump administration cannot simply erase four decades of law protecting patients’ lives with the stroke of a pen. Regardless of where they live, pregnant patients have a right to emergency abortion care that will save their health or lives. By rescinding this guidance, the Trump administration has sent a clear signal that it is siding not with the majority, but with its anti-abortion allies — and that will come at the expense of women’s lives. The ACLU will use every lever we have to keep President Trump and his administration from endangering our health and lives.”