Topline
A pair of women from Texas have filed federal complaints over claims two different hospitals in the state declined to provide legal treatment for their ectopic pregnancies and the delay in care ultimately led to irreversible fertility damage—a series of events they blame on doctors’ fear of violating the state’s strict abortion ban.
A sign marks the entrance to an emergency room.
Key Facts
Kyleigh Thurman and Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz say they sought treatment at different hospitals in the state for ectopic pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tubes that is always fatal to the fetus and can be life-threatening for the mother.
The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act allows for ectopic pregnancies to be terminated in any state and Texas law also explicitly allows it, but both hospitals declined to provide treatment, the women said Monday in a pair of complaints to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Due to the delay in care for the condition, both women lost one of their fallopian tubes, the complaints say, which will make it harder to conceive in the future without the help of in vitro fertilization.
The Center for Reproductive Rights advocacy organization, which helped file both complaints, said the women were denied timely treatment because “doctors are so afraid of being prosecuted that they are delaying care in order to do additional, excessive testing to ensure that their medical judgment will not be second-guessed by state officials.”
Both complaints ask the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the hospitals and penalize them if they are found to have been in violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (fines of up to $129,233 per violation can be imposed on hospitals and individual physicians, and patients can sue hospitals in civil court over EMTALA violations.)
Representatives of the hospitals named in the complaint, Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital and Ascension Seton Williamson Hospital, did not immediately respond to request for comment Monday.
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Big Number
20. That’s how many women filed cases in Texas last year after they, too, were denied legal abortions while experiencing dangerous pregnancy complications, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Key Background
Abortion as a medical procedure for those experiencing life-threatening pregnancy complications has faced legal risk since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Since then, states like Texas and others have passed new laws outlawing abortions with rare exceptions and women across the nation have come forward with similar stories to Thurman and Norris-De La Cruz. In Texas, abortions are banned except in cases that protect the life of the pregnant patient, and doctors who intervene without proof the procedure was necessary can find their medical license at risk, face life in prison or be hit with a $100,000 fine. More than a dozen women and two doctors sued the state of Texas last year claiming they were denied abortions only to later get deathly ill or have their future fertility threatened, and other women in other states have shared stories of having to carry babies to term who were destined to die of fatal birth defects because their state laws did not allow them to terminate. Fourteen states have total abortion bans, according to the pro-abortion rights research group Guttmacher Institute, and 27 have limitations based on duration of the pregnancy.
Tanent
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act was passed in 1986 and requires emergency rooms to stabilize anyone experiencing a medical emergency. In the past, the law has been interpreted to include performing abortions if emergently necessary, but that was before states were allowed to pass individual laws banning the procedure. Biden in 2022 said the law requires doctors to perform emergency abortions if it’s required to stabilize a patient, but Texas sued over the guidance, and an appellate court ruled Texas’ doctors aren’t required to perform the procedure. A lawsuit in Idaho that would have determined if the state’s abortion ban can overrule the EMTALA requirement made its way to the Supreme Court earlier this year, but the case was dismissed and sent back to the lower courts. The decision did make it legal for emergency abortions to continue in Idaho while the litigation plays out.
Further Reading
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Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes reporter who covers breaking news with a frequent focus on the entertainment industry, streaming, sports news, publishing, pop culture and climate change. She joined Forbes in 2023 and lives in Dallas. She’s covered Netflix’s hottest documentaries, a surge of assaults reported on social media, the most popular books of the year and how climate change stands to impact the way we eat. Roeloffs was included on Editor & Publisher Magazine’s “ 25 Under 30” list in 2023 and worked covering local news in the greater Boston area from 2017 to 2023. She graduated with a double major in political science and journalism from Northeastern University. Follow Roeloffs for continued coverage of streaming wars, pop culture news and trending topics.
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