Mobile App to send automated sms. Possible (without user intervention)

Hi,
First off, I'm not a mobile phone developer and not intent to get into it (too busy with web/db/etc)

However I'm being blind-sided (or so it feel) by the guys we partner with developing the mobile app (for the most part it get it's data from a web api I created.)

There's an important function which my api currently provide and I'm uncomfortable that the functionality is in my api instead of the mobile app.
Reason is that this functionality is a function member's activate in case of emergency. If the phone do not have an internet connection the user can press that button until they are blue, nothing will happen.

So what I'd like to have is the mobile app automatically send an sms to *whatever i will figure out* to raise the panic event rather.

I guess my biggest question is if a mobile app (they uses phonegap) can automatically send out sms's (without a user going through confirmation messages and all that. they should be able to click "panic" and throw the phone out the window, knowing the emergency center have been notified something is going down.

Possible? Any advice / tips / etc would be more than welcome (had I had time I'd jump straight into the phonegap tutorials on pluralsight, but really too busy to nut that out.)

Thanks in advance!