Joplin woman denied abortion at a Kansas hospital sues, alleging her life was put at risk

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — A woman who was denied an abortion at a Kansas hospital after suffering a pregnancy complication that her attorneys say put her at risk of sepsis and even death is suing in a case that already prompted a federal investigation.

Mylissa Farmer, of Joplin, Missouri, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against the University of Kansas Health System and the public oversight body that governs its operations.

Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat or stabilize patients who are in active labor and provide a medical transfer to another hospital if they don’t have the staff or resources to treat them. Medical facilities must comply with the law if they accept Medicare funding.

But Farmer’s suit alleges that the hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, broke that law and a state anti-discrimination act. The hospital denied the allegations in a written statement.

“While we cannot comment publicly on the specifics of an individual patient’s care,” the statement said. “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 suit said Farmer was “overjoyed” to be pregnant before her water broke on Aug. 2, 2022. She was just shy of 18 weeks’ gestation.

It was the worst possible timing: Roe v. Wade had been overturned five weeks earlier, and that very day, Kansas residents were voting on a measure that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban the procedure outright.

The race had just been called and the measure had been rejected by the time she showed up at the University of Kansas Hospital. She’d already been to Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri, earlier that day. But a Missouri abortion ban had just taken effect. The ban provides exceptions in medical emergencies and when necessary to save the life of the mother, but that summer doctors were still struggling to understand what qualified as an exception.

A federal investigation found that doctors at both hospitals told Farmer that her fetus would not survive, that her amniotic fluid had emptied and that she was at risk for serious infection or losing her uterus. But the investigation found neither hospital would terminate the pregnancy because a fetal heartbeat was still detectable.

The suit said the doctors at Freeman cited the statewide abortion ban.

A doctor at the University of Kansas initially suggested ending the pregnancy by inducing labor so she would have a chance to hold and say goodbye to her daughter, whom she and her now-husband already had named Maeve. But the suit said that doctor later returned and said that her medical judgment had been overridden and that she could not induce labor because it would be too “risky” in the “heated” “political” environment.

The suit alleged that the University of Kansas Hospital “deserted Ms. Farmer in her time of crisis.” It said she was turned away “with no treatment whatsoever — not even antibiotics or Tylenol.” The suit said that staff didn’t check her temperature or her pain.

She then returned to the hospital in Joplin, where she was admitted for observation as her health “continued to deteriorate,” the suit said. Freeman Health System was not named as a defendant.

On Aug. 4, she drove several hours to a clinic in Illinois while in labor and underwent an abortion there.

But the suit said the prolonged miscarriage had caused a preventable infection. She was unable to work for many months and lost her home because of the lost wages, the suit said.

Farmer said previously that the experience was so traumatic that she got her tubes tied.

The suit said the woman thought the University of Kansas Hospital would be “her lifeline.”

“Instead, hospital staff told her that, while they had the ability to provide life-saving care, and thought it was necessary, they would not do so,” the suit said. “As a result, she then endured hours of agonizing labor in her car, terrified that her miscarriage would not only end her pregnancy but also take her life.”