Woman sues Kansas hospital over alleged denial of emergency abortion

(NEW YORK) — A Missouri woman is suing a Kansas hospital where she says she was denied an emergency abortion after she went into premature labor at 18 weeks of pregnancy, alleging she was denied emergency health-stabilizing care.

The lawsuit comes a year after a government investigation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that hospitals in Missouri and Kansas violated federal law when they refused to provide Mylissa Farmer with abortion care.

Farmer is now suing the University of Kansas Health System and the hospital authority that governs it under a law — Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, EMTALA — that federally mandates emergency stabilizing care for all patients in hospitals funded by Medicare.

In a lawsuit, Farmer alleged that she suffered preterm premature rupture of membranes — when a pregnant woman’s water breaks before the pregnancy is viable — in August 2022 and she had lost all her amniotic fluid by the time she arrived at the Kansas Hospital. She alleges she had been sent to the hospital after being turned away from a Missouri hospital due to the state’s abortion ban.

Without treatment, she was at risk of severe blood loss, sepsis, loss of fertility and death, according to the suit.

Farmer alleged that physicians at the hospital “refused to perform even routine emergency checks such as taking Ms. Farmer’s temperature and assessing per pain,” according to the lawsuit.

Physicians at the hospital told her of the risks she faced without an emergency abortion, but still turned her away without any treatment, Farmer alleged.

Farmer got abortion care two days later in Illinois, but her prolonged miscarriage “caused extensive damage to her health,” according to the suit.

She is seeking a “declaration that the hospital violated federal and Kansas law by turning her away and financial compensation for the harm she suffered,” the National Women’s Law Center, which is representing her, said in a statement.

“What happened to me should never happen to anyone. Denying me care not only put my life at risk but inflicted irreparable trauma, physical and mental suffering, and financial hardship on me and my husband,” Farmer said in a statement Tuesday.

Farmer “continues to suffer physically, psychologically, and financially as a result of her ordeal. Her doctor believes the trauma from the denial of care exacerbated a chronic illness, for which she has been hospitalized several times since TUKH’s denial of care,” the lawsuit said.

“The psychological and physical manifestations of the trauma Ms. Farmer suffered ultimately prevented her from working for many months. Without the ability to earn wages, Ms. Farmer lost the home she owned,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit follows a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that blocked Idaho’s ban on abortions in cases where there is a threat to the health of the mother. The case was the first time the court has weighed in on a state abortion law since it overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for abortion rights.

The University of Kansas Health System told ABC News it “has not seen the lawsuit and don’t want to comment on something we’ve not had the opportunity to review.”

But in a statement following last year’s complaint, the hospital said it was following policy.

“It met the standard of care based upon the facts known at the time, and complied with all applicable law,” according to the statement, adding that it will “respect” the government’s process on the complaint.