After Roe v. Wade fell in June 2022, media outlets launched an unprincipled attack on pro-life states and laws, blaming the laws for cases of medical negligence. But a new report from the Associated Press unwittingly shows that hospitals and doctors in even pro-abortion states are failing to properly treat pregnant women.
The AP claimed, “More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations found.”
Although the AP’s article regarding the matter heavily focused on instances of medical neglect in states with pro-life laws, it also admitted, “Serious violations that jeopardized a mother or her fetus’ heath occurred in states with and without abortion bans….”
The AP claims that pregnant women are sometimes denied appropriate medical care, not because of pro-life laws, but because of doctor or hospital negligence or misdiagnosis. Despite this, major media outlets with a pro-abortion political agenda remain focused on blaming pro-life state laws for doctors’ failures.
No data used by the AP for its analysis was linked by the outlet online at the time of this report, and the outlet claims it obtained information through FOIA requests submitted in 2023. The data requested was for the previous year, 2022, and it is not apparent that the AP sought data for any years prior to 2022 for comparison. Instead, its analysis focused only on the first half of 2022 prior to the June 2022 Dobbs decision, and the second half of 2022 post-Dobbs.
Texas cases
The AP focuses much of the article on two Texas women who suffered undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies. Texas’ pro-life law protects preborn children from abortion but does not define ectopic pregnancy treatments as abortion. The law states, “An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to: (A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child; (B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or (C) remove an ectopic pregnancy” (emphases added).
Kyleigh Thurman and Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz both filed complaints alleging that the pro-life law had something to do with ER doctors failing to properly diagnosis or treat their ectopic pregnancies, however, their own court documents show otherwise. Thurman’s complaint states, “Moreover, although Texas law bans nearly all abortions, Texas law explicitly allows termination of ectopic pregnancies.”
Norris-De La Cruz’s court documents state, “Ms. Norris-De La Cruz’s mother called an abortion clinic in New Mexico, but the clinic, shocked at Ms. Norris-De La Cruz’s experience, explained that management of an ectopic pregnancy is not illegal in Texas” (emphasis added).
Read details on their cases here.
Neither Texas woman received immediate care for an ectopic pregnancy, but despite media spin, it is not because of the Texas law, which is quite clear. Norris-De La Cruz’s complaint states:
There can be no valid argument, even under Texas law, that a hospital is justified in discharging a patient and instructing them to wait two days and then return for additional testing to reconfirm their ectopic diagnosis or that a hospital must obtain absolute certainty about the diagnosis before providing treatment.
As just discussed, providing medical treatment “with the intent to[] . . . remove an ectopic pregnancy” “is not an abortion” in Texas. Tex. Health & Safety Code § 245.002(1)(C) (emphasis added). So if a physician determines that a patient likely has an ectopic pregnancy and provides treatment with the intent to terminate the presumed ectopic pregnancy, that act is not an abortion under Texas law, even in the remote circumstance that the pregnancy was not in fact ectopic.
Texas law does not require absolute certainty that a pregnancy is ectopic before treatment can be provided.
In reality, Texas law (as shown above) specifically states that ectopic pregnancy treatment is not an abortion. Therefore, the law is absolutely not “making it nearly impossible to get basic emergency healthcare,” despite Norris-De La Cruz claiming that it is.
Pro-lifers agree that the women should have received care. “Sending a woman back home [with an ectopic pregnancy] is completely unnecessary, completely dangerous,” Texas Right to Life Director John Seago told the AP.
Florida cases
Focusing again on a pro-life state, the AP introduced the story of a 15-week pregnant woman in Florida. At the time of this incident, babies in Florida were protected from abortion after 15 weeks gestation, though the law has since been updated to protect babies beginning at about six weeks. This woman was experiencing the leakage of amniotic fluid — preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM). Standard care would have included admitting the woman to the hospital and monitoring her, checking for infection, and inducing labor if necessary.
“Broward Health Coral Springs’ obstetrics medical director told an investigator that inducing labor for anyone who presents with pre-viable premature rupture of membranes is ‘the standard of care, has been a while, regardless of heartbeat, due to the risk to the mother,'” reported the AP. Although it will indeed ‘end the pregnancy,’ it is not an induced abortion because the intent is not to kill the child, but to save the mother’s life — and therefore, early delivery in such a case is not prohibited by state law.
And as previously reported by Live Action News:
According to the Cleveland Clinic… If your pregnancy is fewer than 37 weeks and your membranes rupture, your pregnancy care provider will decide if delivery is necessary or if they can delay labor. Allowing a pregnancy to continue after the membranes rupture increases your chances of infection and other complications.”
Cleveland Clinic states, “Your provider will keep you in the hospital on bed rest and attempt to prolong the pregnancy.” In addition, treatments may include steroids to develop the baby’s lungs, antibiotics to prevent infection and prolong the pregnancy, medication to stop labor, and magnesium sulfate to help the baby’s brain. Doctors should also monitor the mother for signs of infection.
Despite this, and even though an ultrasound allegedly showed no amniotic fluid remaining in the woman’s uterus, which can cause infection, an ER doctor discharged her without consulting with the hospital’s OB/GYN. Tragically, the woman later miscarried her baby in a public restroom. This is obvious medical neglect — not because of the pro-life law, but because of a doctor’s failure to consult with a specialist.
Yet, the AP reported that a doctor at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told an investigator, “Because of the new laws … staff cannot intervene unless there is a danger to the patient’s health.” Doctors in Florida can always intervene, they just can’t intentionally kill the baby. Florida’s HB5 in effect at the time allowed for “termination of pregnancy” if the woman was at risk of “substantial or irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function” — which PPROM can cause if an infection occurs.
California cases
The AP then admitted that such medical negligence and failure to treat also occur in pro-abortion states. It said that in Washington state, where abortion is protected, a hospital admitted that it routinely sends pregnant patients to other hospitals.
In addition, doctors at an emergency room in Bakersfield, California — a state that protects and celebrates abortion — failed to properly diagnose a woman with a uterine rupture, and the delay in care led to her baby’s death. Treatment for a uterine rupture, which is when the uterus tears, must be immediate — and standard care is an emergency C-section, not an induced abortion.
The AP also noted that doctors at ERs in California have failed to check for prenatal heartbeats and have discharged patients who were in active labor, causing them to deliver at home or in ambulances.
However, interestingly enough, the AP failed to go into detail about these cases from pro-abortion states.
Previous reports show that even prior to the fall of Roe, a doctor in pro-abortion California lost his license due to his medical neglect of pregnant patients.
Not an issue with pro-life laws
The AP attempted to blame doctor confusion over pro-life laws for acts of medical negligence. However, every hospital system has attorneys capable of educating their doctors on state laws surrounding abortion and what is and isn’t legally permissible.
If even the abortion industry knows what laws in neighboring pro-life states are, shouldn’t hospital attorneys and physicians?
Any doctor should know that intentionally killing a preborn child is entirely different than delivering a child immediately to save a woman’s life. It’s quite simple to understand what is or isn’t an induced abortion because there is a difference between an emergency delivery that might lead to the baby’s natural death — such as an emergency C-section — and an act specifically carried out to kill the baby — such as injecting the child’s heart with a drug to purposefully cause the baby to go into cardiac arrest.
Despite the AP’s admission that medical negligence is a problem in every state — pro-abortion and pro-life — it still attempted to paint pro-life laws in a bad light, perhaps with the purpose of confusing instead of informing Americans about abortion laws and what abortion is.
The truth is that there are doctors failing to properly treat pregnant women in every state, regardless of pro-life laws. Reversing pro-life laws won’t prevent this, but a better understanding of laws and more immediate consequences for negligent doctors and hospitals — as well as more transparency in doctor and hospital track records — will keep women informed and protected during pregnancy.
