Early in her pregnancy, Jaci Statton was in her kitchen when she felt like she was going to pass out and saw her jeans soaked in blood. Doctors told her that the pregnancy was not viable and that it could threaten her life if an abortion was not performed soon, she said.
But Ms. Statton lives in Oklahoma, a state that bans most abortions. Three hospitals refused to provide the procedure, he said. In the third, “they said, ‘We can’t touch you unless you’re like crashing in front of us,'” Ms. Statton, 26, in an interview. The hospital’s only suggestion, he said, was “let’s wait in the parking lot until I’m about to die.”
On Tuesday, Ms. Statton filed a legal complaint with the US Department of Health and Human Services alleging that a third institution, Oklahoma Children’s Hospital, violated a federal law requiring hospitals with emergency departments to provide abortions in emergency situations, regardless of state. abortion restrictions.
Her case is part of several legal challenges filed Tuesday involving patients and doctors in three states — Idaho, Tennessee and Oklahoma — who say those states’ abortion bans prevent women with serious complications from in pregnancy to abort, even in cases where medical necessity. is clear.
The lawsuits, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization, represent an expansion of legal strategies initiated by abortion rights groups in recent months, after the Supreme Court’s ruling in last year repealed the national right to abortion.
With 14 states so far enacting laws banning most abortions, some abortion rights advocacy groups are focusing on cases involving patients who wanted a pregnancy that developed serious complications or abnormalities. The cases do not seek to overturn the bans but rather to gain legal clarity ensuring that patients in these situations should be exempt from state abortion bans.
The groups argue that the vague wording of the laws and the widespread confusion and fear among doctors that they could be sued or punished have resulted in denial of care, with sometimes dire consequences for patients’ health or ability. get pregnant in the future.
Officials from two anti-abortion groups say the state abortion ban already allows for exceptions in life-threatening emergencies and that abortion rights advocates are trying to sow confusion. said Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, that although she has never performed elective abortions, “there are times when I have to separate a mother from her unborn child in order to preserve her life in an emergency.”
A legal approach, which began earlier this year with a lawsuit filed against the State of Texas on behalf of patients and doctors, is seeking clarification of the state’s abortion restrictions to allow doctors to terminate pregnancies for patients with medical emergencies or severe fetal anomalies. Lawsuits filed Tuesday against Tennessee and Idaho reflect that approach.
Another approach – used in the case of Ms. Statton – is asking the federal government to investigate hospitals that refuse abortions to patients with medical emergencies in states with abortion bans.
This spring, in a first-of-its-kind action, the federal government told a hospital in Missouri and another in Kansas that they violated federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, when they denied an abortion to a woman whose water broke at 17 weeks at her pregnancy. That law requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding and have emergency rooms to provide treatment including abortions if necessary to stabilize patients. The complaint of Ms. Statton is asking the federal agency responsible for enforcing EMTALA, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, to investigate Oklahoma Children’s Hospital and issue a finding that it violated that law. Potential consequences include fines and exclusion from Medicare funding.
OU Health, which includes Children’s Hospital, said in a statement: “Our health care complies with state and federal laws and regulatory compliance standards.”
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services declined to say whether they were investigating the Oklahoma claim and said the administration is committed to “protecting people’s access to the health care they need, including abortion care.”
At a news conference Tuesday, leaders of the Center for Reproductive Rights said the limited exceptions to state abortion bans were written with terminology that doctors don’t use and they made it unclear when there might be a risk. doctors are punished.
“What these laws force doctors to do is to weigh the very real threat of criminal prosecution against the health and well-being of their patients,” said Nancy Northup, the group’s president.
In the case of Texas, then a hearing in July in which many women gave tearful testimony, a judge issued a temporary exemption to the state’s abortion ban that would have allowed patients with serious pregnancy complications to obtain abortions, but the exemption was blocked when the state. The case is set to go to trial next year.
The lawsuits filed Tuesday against Tennessee and Idaho — which include eight patients, four doctors and an Idaho medical organization — don’t just seek clarification about which situations qualify as medical emergencies. eligible for abortions but also ask state courts to expand exceptions so that pregnancies with fatal fetal anomalies can be legally aborted.
The plaintiffs in the Tennessee case include Nicole Blackmon, who said she was 15 weeks pregnant when she learned the fetus had a life-threatening medical condition. Tennessee’s abortion ban does not include exceptions for severe fetal anomalies, so she could not receive an abortion in the state. Ms. Blackmon was unable to travel to another state, and seven months into her pregnancy, after her health deteriorated, gave birth to a stillborn baby, she said at a news conference Tuesday.
“That law forced me to carry a baby for months that was not viable and could have easily killed me,” said Ms. Blackmon, who said that shortly before she became pregnant last year, her 14-year-old son Daniel died in a drive-by shooting. “I was left waiting to lose another child in the same year,” she said.
The Tennessee attorney general’s office said it has not yet received the center’s lawsuit and will review it when it does.
In Oklahoma, Ms. Statton, a mother of three, first went to a local Catholic hospital, which told her she was having a miscarriage. The next day she visited her obstetrician-gynecologist, who determined that she had a partial molar pregnancy, a condition in which an egg is fertilized by two sperm, creating an embryo with too many chromosomes, which cannot survive. . The condition can cause precancerous sacs or cysts to form in the uterus, which can rupture and cause heavy bleeding or can become cancerous.
said Ms. Statton said the doctor told her “it was going to get worse” unless she had an abortion to remove the tissue, but because the hospital was Catholic, the doctor could not perform the procedure.
He moved Ms. Statton at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center, about an hour away in Oklahoma City.
There, said Ms. Statton, who was about nine weeks pregnant, said doctors told her she should have an abortion right away, but an ultrasound technician told them they couldn’t because the baby’s heart activity could still be detected. “They argue with the ultrasound tech,” Ms. Statton, and the doctors eventually “came back into the room and said ‘We can’t do it.'”
They transferred him to Oklahoma Children’s Hospital, part of the same health system, saying it had special care that might allow him to treat him. When the staff at that hospital said they could not perform an abortion until her condition worsened, her husband began to cry, saying, “’You’re going to lose me, I’m going to lose our child,’” Ms. Statton said.
They drove 180 miles to get an abortion at a clinic in Kansas, fearing her condition would worsen along the way, Ms. Statton. He still feels sad and angry, he said. In May, she had a tubal ligation to prevent future pregnancies and started taking antidepressants for the first time, she said.
said Ms. Statton said that when her state banned abortion she didn’t think much of it because “I was going to keep my baby so I didn’t have to.”
Now, she says, “I just want other women to know that if they’re going through this, they’re not alone and it’s not their fault.”
