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The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday that will inform what could arguably be the court's most consequential abortion ruling since it upended 50 years of abortion policy in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision. Yet fresh polling conducted in seven battleground states by Navigator Research shows that 97% of likely voters know very little about the 40-year-old federal law that lies at the heart of the legal battle—the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
Often referred to as EMTALA, the law requires federally funded hospitals to provide emergency room patients with lifesaving abortion care if it's needed to stabilize a health emergency. As Daily Kos' Joan McCarter points out, hospitals receiving Medicare funds must provide that care "even if it conflicts with a state’s own stricter abortion rules."
