A few days ago I wrote about the House Republican's number two legislative priority of doing something productive working to fix the economy redefining rape to include the draconian misnomer 'forcible rape.' The GOP has opened up two more fronts in its war on women, with a Georgia state lawmaker seeking to redefine rape victims as 'accusers', and now this gem:
The bill, known currently as H.R. 358 or the "Protect Life Act," would amend the 2010 health care reform law that would modify the way Obamacare deals with abortion coverage
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A bit of backstory: currently, all hospitals in America that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are bound by a 1986 law known as EMTALA to provide emergency care to all comers, regardless of their ability to pay or other factors. Hospitals do not have to provide free care to everyone that arrives at their doorstep under EMTALA -- but they do have to stabilize them and provide them with emergency care without factoring in their ability to pay for it or not. If a hospital can't provide the care a patient needs, it is required to transfer that patient to a hospital that can, and the receiving hospital is required to accept that patient.
In the case of an anti-abortion hospital with a patient requiring an emergency abortion, ETMALA would require that hospital to perform it or transfer the patient to someone who can. (The nature of how that procedure works exactly is up in the air, with the ACLU calling on the federal government to state clearly that unwillingness to perform an abortion doesn't qualify as inability under EMTALA. That argument is ongoing, and the government has yet to weigh in.)
First forcible rape, and now a bill called "Protect Life" that would allow hospitals to refuse abortions to women even when the mother's life is at stake. The GOP sure is creative with its words. And it's priorities. It's good to know that our newly elected House majority is working so diligently to solve the true problems facing our nation.
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