A Kansas Hospital Refused Her an Emergency Abortion Due to ‘Heated Political Environment.’ Now, She’s Suing.

Mylissa Farmer’s landmark sex discrimination lawsuit is also one of the first EMTALA lawsuits filed since the Dobbs decision.

By Kylie Cheung | July 31, 2024 | 2:49pm

Photo: Screenshot Abortion Politics

A Kansas Hospital Refused Her an Emergency Abortion Due to ‘Heated Political Environment.’ Now, She’s Suing.

On Tuesday, a Missouri woman filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Kansas Health System for denying her an emergency abortion in 2022. In the suit, she alleges the hospital system violated a federal law requiring doctors to provide emergency, stabilizing care including abortion (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA), as well as Kansas’ nondiscrimination law. KU denies all the allegations.

In August 2022, Missouri resident Mylissa Farmer went to the local emergency room when her water broke at 17 weeks. Her pregnancy had already been high-risk, and doctors warned her that she faced an increased risk of sepsis, loss of her uterus, and even death. Despite determining that Farmer was having a miscarriage, the hospital declined to perform an abortion, and Farmer and her husband drove three hours to the University of Kansas Health System’s Main Campus. According to Farmer’s lawsuit, the KU hospital also declined to provide an emergency abortion, and the obstetrician on duty said it would “be too risky in the heated political environment.” To be clear, at the time, abortion was (and is!) legal in Kansas up to about 22 weeks. Incidentally, the same night the Kansas hospital turned Farmer away, Kansans overwhelmingly voted against a ballot measure that would have removed the right to abortion from the state Constitution.

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After being discharged, Farmer drove to Illinois, already several days into her miscarriage. An Illinois clinic provided her with the emergency abortion she needed, but Farmer’s suit alleges that she suffered an infection as a result of the needless delay in care, which subjected her to a longer recovery time. In October 2022, Farmer first shared her story ahead of the midterm elections and recounted her experience in an ad for then-Senate Democratic candidate Trudy Busch Valentine. In the ad, Farmer emphasized the stakes of the election for abortion rights if Republican Eric Schmitt won the seat. Farmer and the National Women’s Law Center, which is representing her, were moved to file this lawsuit after the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Moyle v. U.S., which said that under EMTALA, Idaho doctors can provide emergency abortion care… at least for now. The court ultimately ruled that the case was “improvidently granted,” sending it back to a lower court.

Farmer’s suit is one of the first filed under EMTALA by an individual denied emergency abortion care since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Michelle Banker, senior director of litigation for reproductive rights and health at the NWLC, argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling “only reinforces the merits of” Farmer’s case.

Banker told Jezebel that KU’s treatment of Farmer was “unconscionable,” as the hospital turned her away in the midst of a “life-threatening” miscarriage without providing any health care. She argues that Farmer’s experience is also a clear-cut case of sex discrimination, “because hospitals are required to provide care to everybody—the full range of emergency care people need, including abortion—but they sent a pregnant patient at risk of sepsis, infection, hemorrhage, or even death, home, citing the political climate.” The obstetrician’s alleged comment to Farmer is “even more inexcusable,” Banker says, because, again, abortion was (and is) legal at the time. Farmer’s experience embodies how “chaos and misinformation” wrought by the end of Roe v. Wade have impacted even states where abortion remains legal, “causing confusion among different hospitals about what exactly their obligations are, what they can and can’t do.”

“But the law is clear,” Banker said: When a patient comes to a hospital with a condition like Farmer’s, they’re “statutorily required” to provide stabilizing abortion care; they “don’t have to, and must not” wait until a patient is on the brink of death to provide that care.

“What happened to me should never happen to anyone,” Farmer said in a press release shared with Jezebel. “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.”

In a statement shared with Jezebel on Wednesday, a spokesperson for KU said the hospital system “denies the allegations and claims made in the lawsuit” and “intends to address those allegations in the appropriate forum.”

“While we cannot comment publicly on the specifics of an individual patient’s care, The University of Kansas Health System believes that the care provided to Ms. Farmer was entirely appropriate, non-discriminatory, and in compliance with all applicable law,” the spokesperson said.

In May 2023, the Health and Human Services Department’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) determined that the two hospitals that turned Farmer away—the University of Kansas Hospital and Missouri’s Freeman Health System—violated EMTALA. In a statement at the time, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said it was “fortunate” Farmer survived, and that “she never should have gone through the terrifying ordeal she experienced in the first place.” Becerra pledged to continue “to investigate and enforce the law to the fullest extent of our legal authority.”

With Farmer’s lawsuit this week, she and the NWLC are seeking a declaration that the KU hospital violated federal and Kansas law, as well as financial compensation for the harm she suffered. “I endured a horror no one should ever have to face,” Farmer said. “Through this lawsuit, I hope to achieve justice and help prevent others from suffering the same experience.”