Woman sues Kansas hospital that denied her an emergency abortion

Two years ago, Mylissa Farmer was denied an emergency abortion at hospitals in Missouri and Kansas while experiencing a miscarriage.

On Tuesday, she filed a lawsuit against one of the hospitals — The University of Kansas Health System — accusing the hospital of sex discrimination and saying it violated a federal law meant to ensure doctors treat patients who come into the emergency room.

A spokesperson with the health system did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“While Ms. Farmer was clearly in the midst of a complicated and dangerous miscarriage — and there was no chance her fetus could survive — the care she needed was an abortion because fetal cardiac activity was still detectable,” states the lawsuit filed in Kansas federal court. “Ms. Farmer was entitled to this emergency abortion care under state and federal law.”

Farmer was living in southwest Missouri when she miscarried. Several weeks earlier, Missouri banned abortion in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to the procedure.

The day she went to an emergency room — cramping and bleeding at 18 weeks pregnant — Kansas voters were heading to the polls to vote in favor of keeping abortion legal in that state.

Farmer went to the emergency room at Freeman Health’s emergency department in Joplin at her OB-GYN’s urging. There, medical staff determined the pregnancy was no longer viable, but because the fetus had a heartbeat, and because Farmer’s condition wasn’t immediately life-threatening, she was turned away.

Hospitals in Joplin, KCK cited for denying emergency abortion to Missouri woman

According to the lawsuit, doctors told Farmer that she was at risk of infection, severe blood loss, the loss of her uterus and death. But they would not help her because of Missouri’s abortion ban, which had only been in place for several weeks, outlawing all abortions except for in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

Farmer then traveled three hours across the border to a hospital in Kansas, where abortion is limited after 22 weeks gestation. However, doctors at the University of Kansas Health System also refused to perform an abortion. Kansas law bans abortions at any facilities run by the University of Kansas Hospital Authority, with exceptions only for the life of the mother.

“Ms. Farmer arrived at (the University of Kansas Health) heartbroken, in pain and terrified for her life,” the lawsuit reads.

The doctor who saw Farmer initially told her the hospital would induce labor so Farmer could then hold her daughter and say goodbye, according to the lawsuit. But the doctor later said her decision had been overridden by others at the hospital, and that she could no longer induce labor because it would be too “risky” in Kansas’ “heated” political environment to do so when the fetus still had a heartbeat.

Instead, according to the suit, the hospital refused to even perform routine checks such as taking her temperature and assessing her pain. She was turned away without so much as Tylenol or antibiotics to ward off potential infection despite Farmer being at high risk for infection and experiencing heavy bleeding, mental fog and acute pain.

She returned to the Joplin hospital the next day, was kept overnight and then released without additional treatment.

Farmer eventually traveled several hours to Hope Clinic in Granite City, Illinois, for an abortion on Aug. 5. On the drive there, according to the suit, she was in excruciating pain, by then several days into her miscarriage and almost fully dilated.

Back home after the abortion, Farmer’s OB-GYN diagnosed her with an infection and prescribed her antibiotics.

The damage to Farmer’s health and wellbeing was long-term, the lawsuit argues. She was hospitalized several times after the miscarriage, and was unable to work for months. She eventually lost her home and moved out of Missouri.

What Farmer experienced at the Kansas hospital “compounded the trauma of her pregnancy loss and denied her the ability to mourn that loss on her own terms,” the suit reads.

Farmer, who has a history of polycystic ovary syndrome, had feared she and her husband would not be able to get pregnant prior to the summer of 2022, the lawsuit reads.

Her story caused national outrage as women and providers in states with abortion bans and restrictions navigated new and often vague laws. Under Missouri’s new ban, health care providers who perform abortions deemed not necessary to save a woman’s life can be charged with a class B felony. If convicted, they would face up to 15 years in prison and their medical license could also be suspended or revoked.

In a letter to the hospitals several months later, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra warned that both locations had to provide all necessary care required by federal law. A report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found both hospitals had violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

This act, known as EMTALA, requires that hospitals treat patients with emergency conditions despite their ability to pay.

“Although her doctors advised her that her condition could rapidly deteriorate, they also advised that they could not provide her with the care that would prevent infection, hemorrhage, and potentially death because, they said, the hospital policies prohibited treatment that could be considered an abortion,” Becerra wrote in May 2023. “This was a violation of the EMTALA protections that were designed to protect patients like her.”

The federal lawsuit comes in the wake of an Idaho EMTALA case recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. While awaiting the decision, thousands of doctors, including dozens across Missouri, asked the court to uphold EMTALA.

Emergency care for pregnant women at stake in Supreme Court case, Missouri doctor warns

The nation’s highest court sent the case back down to the court of appeals, lifting an injunction that temporarily blocked enforcement of EMTALA in Idaho. Earlier this year, several women with high-risk pregnancies were airlifted to other states in order for emergency physicians to avoid performing emergency abortions in a state with a ban on the procedure.

Unlike the Idaho case, which was brought by the government, Farmer’s is the first high profile EMTALA lawsuit brought by an individual denied their federal rights while pregnant, said Kenna Titus, a legal fellow with the National Women’s Law Center, the organization representing Farmer.

“In the post-Dobbs world, we know that these protections that are provided by EMTALA for pregnant people are more important than they’ve ever been,” Titus said. “A clear decision in this case will make it clear for people across the country that are dealing with this that this is not a gray area. Federal law requires abortion care in emergency situations like this.”

As of Wednesday, no lawsuit had been filed in federal court against the Joplin hospital.

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