California Sues a Catholic Hospital for Denying Patient an Emergency Abortion

[Updated at 3:15 p.m. Sept. 30]

California sued a Catholic hospital in Northern California for denying a pregnant patient emergency abortion care, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced during a Monday press conference.

In the lawsuit, filed in Humboldt County Superior Court, Bonta alleges Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka violated multiple laws, including the state’s Emergency Services Law, which mandates hospitals to provide care “necessary to relieve or eliminate the emergency medical condition.”

The case reveals the limits and challenges of abortion access in California despite the state having some of the nation’s strongest reproductive health protections.

In February, Eureka resident Dr. Anna Nusslock was 15 weeks pregnant when her water broke, she said at the press conference. Multiple doctors told her that the twins she was carrying would not survive, and if she didn’t receive an emergency abortion, neither would she. But Providence St. Joseph Hospital told Nusslock that it could not provide her with an abortion due to a hospital policy prohibiting medical intervention so long as “fetal heart tones” were present.

While experiencing bleeding and “blinding pain,” Nusslock was rushed 12 miles to Mad River Community Hospital in Arcata, California, where she received a life-saving surgery.

“I am here today to tell my story for one simple reason, because I don’t want other people in my community to experience the same life-threatening trauma that I experienced,” Nusslock said.

Bonta said that it’s not unusual to hear tragic stories of women denied life-saving treatment coming out of the 22 states with full or partial abortion bans.

“But as Anna’s story illustrates, even here in California, we are not immune from this problem,” Bonta said.

Providence, which operates 51 hospitals and 1,000 clinics on the West Coast, a spokesperson said the hospital learned about the lawsuit Monday morning.

“We are currently reviewing the filings to understand what is being alleged,” Bryan Kawasaki wrote in a statement, which added that the hospital was “heartbroken” over Nusslock’s experience. “We review every event that may not have met our patient needs or expectations to understand what happened and take appropriate steps to meet those needs and expectations for every patient we encounter.

California’s suit also alleges that Providence’s policy discriminates against pregnant patients, providing different choices than they would for other patients.

“The hospital ignores the medical advice of their physicians and the desires of their patients, subjecting them to intrusive hospital policies that are of no benefit to the patient’s health,” Bonta said.

Dr. Mary Ziegler, an abortion law expert at UC Davis, said that although the state has some of the strongest abortion rights in the country, there are “parts of California where those rights aren’t being realized.” That tends to be in disproportionately rural, conservative and smaller communities.

“We’ve also seen the influence of which kinds of hospitals operate in those communities,” Ziegler said. “Catholic and conservative hospitals tend to have different policies regarding access to these rights than others do.”

Widely seen as a potential candidate for governor in 2024, Bonta has used his enforcement powers to preserve and strengthen reproductive rights in the state.

Earlier this year, Bonta welcomed abortion care providers from states with restrictive laws like Arizona and Idaho, promising to protect them from anti-abortion laws. Last year, Bonta sued an anti-abortion group and a chain of anti-abortion counseling centers, alleging the organizations misled women when they offered unproven treatments to reverse medication abortions.

Bonta said his attorneys believe there may be others who have endured experiences similar to Nusslock and urged others who may have been denied medical care to share their stories with the state Department of Justice.

“We don’t yet know the full scope of this problem or how many patients have suffered, but we do know that unless we act, this will happen again and again,” Bonta said.

Ziegler said the state government has made major financial and political commitments facilitating abortion access, positioning itself as an “abortion sanctuary” since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion two years ago.

“The challenge now is to make those resources work in underprivileged parts of California,” Ziegler said.

“There may need to be more kind of targeted work done at the local level — as opposed to the state level — to make sure that the people we know are still not aware of or able to access those resources are able to do so,” she added.

KQED’s Carly Severn contributed to this report.