More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms have been turned away or negligently treated since 2022.

Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.

Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.

When she 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’s fallopian tube ruptured it, destroying part of her reproductive system.

That’s according to a complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.

“I was left to flail,” said Thurman, 35. “It was nothing short of being misled.”

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
    285·
    5 months ago

    The Biden administration says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s life, despite state bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue.

    This is why I don’t think the hospital is really to blame. They’re stuck in this legal limbo wherein one action might violate Texas state law, and another might violate a Federal law.

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
      22·
      5 months ago

      Fair enough, but the thing is if the woman dies, absolutely no one is held responsible for her death. The state should be if they’re enacting rules that criminalize health care … but under the current misogynistic SCOTUS that won’t happen because ‘something something rule of law’.

      • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
        71·
        5 months ago

        The state should be [held responsible] if they’re enacting rules that criminalize health care

        They should. They should sue the state, but, like you said, it wouldn’t accomplish anything so long as this SCOTUS remains as it currently is.