{"id":253642,"date":"2024-08-12T20:57:53","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T20:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/12\/pregnant-women-are-being-left-to-bleed-or-miscarry-in-public-restrooms-because-doctors-are-too-scared-to-treat-them-lawsuit-claims\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:12:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:12:31","slug":"pregnant-women-are-being-left-to-bleed-or-miscarry-in-public-restrooms-because-doctors-are-too-scared-to-treat-them-lawsuit-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/12\/pregnant-women-are-being-left-to-bleed-or-miscarry-in-public-restrooms-because-doctors-are-too-scared-to-treat-them-lawsuit-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Pregnant women are being left to bleed or miscarry in public restrooms because doctors are too scared to treat them, lawsuit claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n

Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn\u2019t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.<\/p>\n

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Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to \u201clet nature take its course\u201d before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.<\/p>\n

When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection to end the pregnancy. It was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman\u2019s fallopian tube ruptured it, destroying part of her reproductive system.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to a\u00a0complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights<\/a>\u00a0filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was left to flail,\u201d Thurman said. \u201cIt was nothing short of being misled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden administration says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman\u2019s life, despite state bans enacted after the Supreme Court\u00a0overturned the constitutional right to an abortion<\/a>\u00a0more than two years ago. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court\u00a0declined<\/a>\u00a0to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n

More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations found.<\/p>\n

Two women \u2014 one in Florida and\u00a0one in Texas<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home. At least four other women with ectopic pregnancies had trouble getting treatment, including one in California who needed a blood transfusion after she sat for nine hours in an emergency waiting room.<\/p>\n

Abortion bans complicate risky pregnancy care<\/h4>\n

In Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, medical and legal experts say the law is complicating decision-making around emergency pregnancy care.<\/p>\n

Although the state law says termination of ectopic pregnancies isn\u2019t considered abortion, the draconian penalties scare Texas doctors from treating those patients, the Center for Reproductive Rights argues.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs fearful as hospitals and doctors are of running afoul of these state abortion bans, they also need to be concerned about running afoul of federal law,\u201d said Marc Hearron, a center attorney. Hospitals face a federal investigation, hefty penalties and threats to their Medicare funding if they violate the federal law.<\/p>\n

The organization filed complaints last week with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service alleging that different Texas emergency rooms failed to treat two patients, including Thurman, with ectopic pregnancies.<\/p>\n

One\u00a0complaint<\/a>\u00a0says Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz, 25, lost a fallopian tube and most of an ovary after an Arlington, Texas, hospital sent her home without treating her ectopic pregnancy, even after a doctor said discharge was \u201cnot in her best interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe doctors knew I needed an abortion, but these bans are making it nearly impossible to get basic emergency healthcare,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cI\u2019m filing this complaint because women like me deserve justice and accountability from those that hurt us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conclusively diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy can be difficult. Doctors cannot always find the pregnancy\u2019s location on an ultrasound, three doctors consulted for this article explained. Hormone levels, bleeding, a positive pregnancy test and an ultrasound of an empty uterus all indicate an ectopic pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t be 100% \u2014 that\u2019s the tricky part,\u201d said Kate Arnold, an OB-GYN in Washington. \u201cThey\u2019re literally time bombs. It\u2019s a pregnancy growing in this thing that can only grow so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas Right to Life Director John Seago said state law protects doctors from prosecution for terminating ectopic pregnancies, even if a doctor \u201cmakes a mistake\u201d in diagnosing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSending a woman back home is completely unnecessary, completely dangerous,\u201d Seago said.<\/p>\n

But the state law has \u201cabsolutely\u201d made doctors afraid of treating pregnant patients, said Hannah Gordon, an emergency medicine physician who worked in a Dallas hospital until last year.<\/p>\n

She recalled a patient with signs of an ectopic pregnancy at her Dallas emergency room. Because OB-GYNs said they couldn\u2019t definitively diagnose the problem, they waited to end the pregnancy until she came back the next day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt left a bad taste in my mouth,\u201d said Gordon, who left Texas hoping to become pregnant and worried about the care she\u2019d receive there.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my God, I\u2019m dying\u201d<\/h4>\n

When Thurman returned to Ascension Seton Williamson a third time, her OB-GYN told her she\u2019d need surgery to remove the fallopian tube, which had ruptured. Thurman, still heavily bleeding, balked. Losing the tube would jeopardize her fertility.<\/p>\n

Her doctor told her she risked death if she waited any longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe came in and she\u2019s like, you\u2019re either going to have to have a blood transfusion, or you\u2019re going to have to have surgery or you\u2019re going to bleed out,\u201d Thurman said, through tears. \u201cThat\u2019s when I just kind of was like, \u2018Oh my God, I\u2019m, I\u2019m dying.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The hospital declined to comment on Thurman\u2019s case, but said in a statement it \u201cis committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Florida, a 15-week pregnant woman leaked amniotic fluid for an hour in Broward Health Coral Springs\u2019 emergency wait room, according to federal documents. An ultrasound revealed the patient had no amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus, a dangerous situation that can cause serious infection.<\/p>\n

The woman miscarried in a public bathroom that day, after the emergency room doctor listed her condition as \u201cimproved\u201d and discharged her, without consulting the hospital\u2019s OB-GYN.<\/p>\n

Emergency crews rushed her to another hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator and discharged after six days.<\/p>\n

Abortions after 15 weeks were banned in Florida at the time. Broward Health Coral Springs\u2019 obstetrics medical director told an investigator that inducing labor for anyone who presents with pre-viable premature rupture of membranes is \u201cthe standard of care, has been a while, regardless of heartbeat, due to the risk to the mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hospital declined comment.<\/p>\n

In another Florida case, a doctor admitted state law had complicated emergency pregnancy care.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the new laws \u2026 staff cannot intervene unless there is a danger to the patient\u2019s health,\u201d a doctor at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told an investigator who was probing the hospital\u2019s failure to offer an abortion to a woman whose water broke at 15 weeks, well before the fetus could survive.<\/p>\n

Troubles extend beyond abortion ban states<\/h4>\n

Serious violations that jeopardized a mother or her fetus\u2019 health occurred in states with and without abortion bans, the AP\u2019s review found.<\/p>\n

Two short-staffed hospitals \u2014 in Idaho and Washington \u2014 admitted to investigators they routinely directed pregnant patients to other hospitals.<\/p>\n

A pregnant patient at a Bakersfield, California, emergency room was quickly triaged, but staff failed to realize the urgency of her condition, a uterine rupture. The delay, an investigator concluded, may have contributed to the baby\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Doctors at emergency rooms in California, Nebraska, Arkansas and South Carolina failed to check for fetal heartbeats or discharged patients who were in active labor, leaving them to deliver at home or in ambulances, according to the documents.<\/p>\n

Nursing and doctor shortages, trouble staffing ultrasounds around-the-clock and new abortion laws are making the emergency room a dangerous place for pregnant women, warned Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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