A woman from Eureka who nearly bleed to death while miscarriing twins last year is suing a Catholic hospital chain that claims she refused to provide life-saving abortion care.
Annanas Lock, a chiropractor who sued Providence St. Joseph’s Hospital Eureka and its parent company in Humboldt Superior Court on Tuesday, said he hopes the lawsuit will force the company’s California hospital to comply with state law.
“The job we do is protect people today, and it will help people survive,” she said. “We want to hold the entire Providence Healthcare system accountable.”
The hospital says it is already in compliance with the law.
“The experience explained in this lawsuit is very sad and troubling,” a spokesman for Providence South wrote in a statement. “We are committed to providing care in accordance with federal and state laws and our mission as a faith-based organization, including providing emergency-saving medical interventions that can lead to indirect fetal death.”
The suit is based on a September lawsuit filed by California Atty. General Rob Bonta accused the hospital of violating the state emergency services laws.
“There are existing injunctions in the Attorney General’s case, but they are only against the hospital and are limited while the case is pending,” said KM Bell, senior advisor to reproductive rights and health litigation at the National Women’s Law Center, which led to the case with Nusslock.
The lawsuit on Tuesday aims to permanently and detain all St. Joseph’s hospital injunctions in California.
“I’m really amazed at how the process has healed,” Nusslock said. “We need to put pressure on these hospitals.”
Nusslock and her husband had been working hard for the baby for years when they were pregnant with twins in late 2023. Fifteen weeks after pregnancy, after the water broke in late February last year, I rushed to the emergency room for fear of the worst.
But despite clear signs, Nusslock’s life was dangerous and her twins were unable to survive, but ER participants told her that she was “nearly dead enough” to get emergency abortion care, according to court documents.
“I remember telling someone, this is California!” recalls Nusslock. “But it’s a technology when the only hospital you can have a baby doesn’t help you.”
On the advice of a doctor in St. Joseph’s emergency room, the bleeding Nasslock drove 12 miles to Mad River Community Hospital, where both twins died naturally and the second twin died through abortion procedures.
“If I try to drive [to UCSF]According to the lawsuit, a doctor at St. Joseph told her.
In December, after Mad River shut down its labor and delivery department, another woman sued Eureka Hospital, claiming that she was denied similar care during three separate miscarriages.
In the first case mentioned in her claim, she spent five and a half hours traveling to San Francisco “working active” for help. Second time, she needed two units of blood to recover from the preventable bleeding. In the third, she claims she was left to deliver the dead baby to the hospital toilet.
The woman is currently suffering from post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression.
“The plaintiff desperately wants to have a baby, so Providence St. Joseph is certainly the hospital where she will be going to give birth,” the lawsuit said.
The hospital has denied misconduct in court filings.
As American hospitals consolidate, a growing number is now run by Catholic groups. According to the American Association of Catholic Hospitals, one in seven patients in the US receives care at one of their facilities. Over 15% of American babies are born in Catholic hospital delivery rooms.
After the Supreme Court decision in the DOBBS v. Jackson Women’s Health Agency overturned abortion rights in 2022, around 20 states have restricted or banned procedures.
However, many anti-abortion states such as California have also denied being fired in cases like Nusslock.
“Unfortunately, these refusals to care are nothing new,” Bell said. “But the situation is now even more disastrous.”
St. Joseph agreed to provide emergency abortion care last fall, but the hospital has since reversed the course and called for the state to dismiss the state’s DOJ lawsuit on the grounds that compliance violates the first amendment right to religious freedom.
“SJH could not adhere to such order without abandoning its Catholic identity, the ultimate burden of religious freedom cases,” the motion said.
Bonta said the hospital is disrespecting the law.
“The interest in this was not clear. By acknowledging that they have laws requiring proper care for patients experiencing a life-threatening medical emergency and violating it, SJH asks this court to tolerate their actions by dismissing this action.”
The court is scheduled to govern the matter on May 15th.
In the meantime, Nusslock said the hospital’s actions had reinforced her resolve.
“It feels cruel and it continues to feel cruel,” Nasslock said. “You put this religious policy in my actual life.”
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