A hospital in pro-abortion California faced a state lawsuit in February for its alleged failure to treat a pregnant woman who was facing an emergency. The lawsuit, filed September 30 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alleges that Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka denied Anna Nusslock emergency care when her water broke prematurely while she was 15 weeks pregnant with twins, according to the LA Times.
The condition, known as Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes (PPROM), does not require that a woman have an induced abortion to intentionally kill the preborn baby or babies before delivering them, but could require that doctors help labor along if it is determined to be too far progressed to be stopped. In some cases, but not all, labor can be stopped.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the standard treatment for PPROM at 15 weeks would include the administration of tocolytics to try to stop labor, bed rest to prolong pregnancy, or the induction of labor to induce delivery and reduce the risk of infection in the mother and baby.
Nusslock was reportedly hemorrhaging when she arrived at Providence St. Joseph Hospital, but rather than provide standard treatment, doctors allegedly gave her buckets and towels and told her to drive 12 miles away to Mad River Community Hospital. They incorrectly advised her that as long as one of the twins had a detectable heartbeat the hospital would not allow them to offer her emergency care until her life was at risk. However, delivering living or deceased babies is not an induced abortion, is not considered morally wrong by the Catholic Church, and is not in violation of any pro-life laws.
The only acts prohibited by Catholic teaching to end a pregnancy are those that are carried out with the sole intention of causing the child to die. In Nusslock’s case, if labor could not be stopped, helping her deliver her babies would not be an abortion even though they were too young to survive. Their deaths would be natural and not caused by the doctors.
Pro-abortion advocates and the media, however, have been working overtime to convince Americans that preterm delivery and even emergency C-sections are induced abortions and are banned in certain states. They are not. Nusslock needed her babies delivered and for her bleeding to be stopped, not for her babies to be dismembered before delivery.
The lawsuit from the pro-abortion state alleged that Providence St. Joseph Hospital violated the Emergency Services Law, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the Unfair Competition Law in not carrying out an induced abortion. But again, induced abortion — deliberately causing preborn children to die before delivery — was not what Nusslock needed and is not the standard of care for any pregnancy complication or emergency.
As a result of the lawsuit, Providence St. Joseph Hospital has agreed to comply with California Emergency Services Law requiring all hospitals to commit induced abortions — direct killing — in order to prevent a woman’s health from being seriously jeopardized or impaired.
“While Providence St. Joseph should have been complying with state law up to now, thereby avoiding the harm and trauma to Californians they caused, I am pleased that the hospital has agreed to fully comply with the law going forward, ensuring access to life-saving health services including emergency abortion care,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement Tuesday. “At the California Department of Justice, we believe that abortion care is healthcare.”
As previously reported by Live Action News:
… CNN notes that “Eureka, in the northern reaches of [California], has just two hospitals with labor and delivery units within 100 miles, the California Attorney General’s Office said. Mad River Community Hospital, which provided Nusslock’s [D&E abortion] procedure, said it will close its labor and delivery unit this month, according to the complaint.”
This information flies in the face of pro-abortion claims that pro-life policies are the cause of maternity care deserts — and a lack of this maternity care isn’t something that more abortion can solve (something which certainly isn’t lacking in the state of California). Forcing religious hospitals to decide between intentionally killing preborn babies or shutting down labor and delivery units entirely isn’t likely to improve maternity care anywhere.
Nusslock’s case is the latest in a tragic series of medical negligence that abortion advocates have falsely tried to pin on pro-life ethics.
Despite the agreement, the lawsuit will continue and the hospital has not admitted to any wrongdoing.
