California sues hospital for allegedly denying woman emergency abortion

(CNN) — California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital in Northern California for allegedly refusing to provide a woman with emergency abortion care after she had a miscarriage.

The woman, Anna Nusslock of Eureka, was 15 weeks pregnant with twins when her water broke in February.

Bleeding and in pain, she went to Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, where doctors confirmed that her pregnancy was no longer viable and that the twins couldn’t survive outside the womb, according to the complaint filed by the California Attorney General’s Office in Humboldt County Superior Court on Monday.

Doctors told Nusslock that she needed an abortion to prevent serious health risks, but they could not give her the procedure, the complaint says. Nusslock’s doctor said hospital policy banned the procedure unless there was “a sufficient risk to Anna’s life” because one of the fetuses still had a “detectable heart tone,” according to the complaint.

A spokesperson for Providence told CNN that hospital policy does not deny abortions for emergency care.

“When it comes to complex pregnancies or situations in which a woman’s life is at risk, we provide all necessary interventions to protect and save the life of the mother,” the spokesperson said.

Garry Olney, chief executive of Providence’s Northern California Service Area, wrote in a message to area employees Tuesday, “We are heartbroken over the experience this patient had while in our care and reached out to her today in an effort to express our profound apologies.

“This was a tragic situation that did not meet our high standards for safe, quality, compassionate care. We are immediately re-visiting our training, education and escalation processes in emergency medical situations to ensure that this does not happen again and to ensure that our care teams have the training and support they need to deliver the best possible care for each patient we serve,” Olney wrote.

“As devasted as we are, we can’t begin to imagine what the patient and her family have been through. We will learn from this and renew our commitment to ensuring that the care and experience we deliver are aligned with our high standards, every time and in every care setting.”

The lawsuit says Nusslock’s doctor recommended that she be airlifted more than 270 miles to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center for an abortion, but Nusslock declined because she worried that her insurance wouldn’t cover the $40,000 cost of the helicopter ride.

She asked whether she could drive the facility instead, “and my doctor responded, ‘If you try and drive, you will hemorrhage and you will die before you get somewhere that can help you,’ ” Nusslock said at a news conference Monday.

“I’ll never forget looking at my doctor, tears streaming down my face, my heart shattered into a million pieces, and just pleading with her: ‘Don’t let me die.’”

Nusslock’s husband took her to Mad River Community Hospital, about 20 minutes away – the only other hospital with a labor and delivery unit within 100 miles, according to the complaint – for the procedure.

“I was terrified about the risks to my health and my life that I was facing by waiting to intervene, so we chose to risk the drive to Mad River,” Nusslock said. “Before we left Providence, a nurse came in, and she gave me a bucket full of towels, and she said, ‘they wanted me to give you these in case something happens in the car.’ ”

Nusslock said she did not take the towels because she didn’t know if she would be charged for them.

At Mad River, she was taken into surgery, and a doctor there said she was “actively hemorrhaging” on the operating table, the complaint states.

The state’s lawsuit alleges that the hospital broke a state law that requires any hospital with an emergency room to adequately treat someone who’s in a medical crisis.

“The attorney general says [the emergency services law] includes, essentially, an emergency abortion or miscarriage management,” Mary Ziegler, a legal historian focusing on abortion at the University of California Davis School of Law, told CNN.

“In some parts of California that are rural, the next closest provider is quite far away. And if someone is in a true medical emergency, as this patient was, there may be no safe way to transfer that patient to another hospital without them suffering permanent medical damage or death,” Ziegler said.

In a news release Monday, Bonta said that “It is damning that here in California, where abortion care is a constitutional right, we have a hospital implementing a policy that’s reminiscent of heartbeat laws in extremist red states.

“With today’s lawsuit, I want to make this clear for all Californians: abortion care is healthcare. You have the right to access timely and safe abortion services. At the California Department of Justice, we will use the full force of this office to hold accountable those who, like Providence, are breaking the law.”

Eureka, in the northern reaches of the state, has just two hospitals with labor and delivery units within 100 miles, the California Attorney General’s Office said.

Mad River Community Hospital, which provided Nusslock’s procedure, said it will close its labor and delivery unit this month, according to the complaint.

A spokesperson for Providence said that after that closure, the closest labor and delivery unit will be in Crescent City, about 80 miles from Eureka.

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