Emergency Means Emergency — Unless You’re a Woman in Trump’s America

Let’s get one thing straight: when a pregnant woman shows up at the emergency room bleeding, seizing, or in unimaginable pain, she doesn’t need a theology lecture, a waiting period, or a phone call to a politician. She needs healthcare. Immediate, unimpeded, medically sound emergency care.

But as of this week, thanks to an executive order signed by Donald J. Trump — yes, the same man who recommended ingesting bleach — emergency rooms can now legally deny life-saving care to pregnant women. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not an exaggeration. That is now a grim, dangerous, and disgusting reality.

Let me repeat it for the folks in the back of the church bus: Trump has just removed federal protections that required hospitals to treat pregnant women experiencing medical emergencies, including conditions like ectopic pregnancy, sepsis, or hemorrhage. The very care that could mean the difference between life and death can now be refused if a doctor “objects” — not on medical grounds, but on moral ones.

Let’s all take a breath and sit with that.

We are now a nation where a fetus has more rights than the woman carrying it. We are now living in a country where a pregnant woman could be left to suffer — or die — in a hospital hallway because a hospital administrator, religious directive, or right-wing political appointee doesn’t “approve” of the care she needs.

And make no mistake: this is the result of decades of calculated erosion — of reproductive rights, of medical privacy, and of the idea that women are fully autonomous human beings. It’s not about protecting life. It’s about controlling women. If it were about life, they’d be funding prenatal care, maternal health, child nutrition, and paid parental leave. Instead, they’re funding lawyers to defend hospitals that let women bleed out in the ER.

Let me ask: how many men have been told to “hold on” while seizing from a stroke or bleeding from a gunshot wound because a hospital administrator needed to ask Congress what their stance is on trauma care?

None. Zero. Because this isn’t about emergency medicine. It’s about turning women’s bodies into battlegrounds for political clout.

This executive order is not just an attack on reproductive freedom — it’s an attack on the fundamental principles of emergency care. Since 1986, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) has required that patients receive stabilizing treatment at any hospital that receives Medicare funding — which is most of them. Trump’s new order guts that. And it does so knowing full well that women will suffer and die as a result.

Where are the “pro-life” voices now? Out buying campaign merch from the same man who brags about sexual assault and wants to jail doctors for doing their jobs.

Here’s what we need to do — immediately:

1. Call your Representatives and Senators. Demand they protect EMTALA.
2. Donate to abortion funds and women’s health advocacy groups.
3. Support lawsuits challenging this order. Legal precedent matters.
4. Talk about it. Loudly. Publicly. Unapologetically. Shame thrives in silence.

Women are not political pawns. Emergency care is not optional. This isn’t a debate about “life” — it’s a fight for whether women get to have one.

And if Trump thinks he can legislate that away — he’s about to find out how fierce, how loud, and how ungovernable women can be when we’re done asking nicely.

Because emergency means emergency. Period.

Julie Bolejack, MBA | Truth. Out Loud.

To my women readers, let’s be unladylike together!