Hospital, sued by California, will provide emergency abortion

A Catholic hospital in Eureka has agreed to provide emergency abortion services after a state lawsuit said it had refused to give abortions to pregnant patients in life-threatening emergencies.

The lawsuit alleges that, in February, Providence St. Joseph Hospital denied a patient emergency care when her water prematurely broke while she was 15 weeks pregnant with twins. It allegedly placed her life at risk by telling her to drive to Mad River Community Hospital, a smaller critical access hospital 12 miles away, armed with a bucket and towels, while she was hemorrhaging.

Mad River Community Hospital is scheduled to close its birth center at the end of the month, leaving Providence St. Joseph Hospital as the only labor and delivery unit in Humboldt County.

Providence St. Joseph Hospital entered an agreement Monday to comply with the California Emergency Services Law — which requires all hospitals to provide abortions if the failure to do so would place the patient’s health in serious jeopardy, seriously impair the patient’s bodily functions or result in serious dysfunction of any organ. The law also requires hospitals to provide medically necessary emergency services before transferring a pregnant patient to another hospital for care.

A representative for Providence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“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,” Bonta said in a statement Tuesday. “At the California Department of Justice, we believe that abortion care is healthcare.”

The agreement resolves a motion Bonta had filed asking for a court injunction requiring the hospital to comply with the Emergency Services Law. It does not, however, end the lawsuit or mean that Providence has admitted guilt to any of the suit’s claims.

Bonta filed the lawsuit on Sept. 30 in Humboldt County Superior Court, alleging that Providence violated multiple California laws due to its refusal to provide emergency abortion care.

According to the complaint, Anna Nusslock visited Providence in pain and severely bleeding in February and was diagnosed with previable premature pre-labor rupture of membranes, meaning that her twins would not survive birth. Providence informed her that, as long as one of her twins had a detectable heartbeat, hospital policy prohibited staff from providing an emergency abortion until her life was at even greater risk than it already was, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that this act violated the Emergency Services Law, the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Unfair Competition Law.

“California is the beacon of hope for so many Americans across this country trying to access abortion services since the Dobbs decision,” Bonta said in a Sept. 30 statement on the lawsuit. “It is damning that here in California, where abortion care is a constitutional right, we have a hospital implementing a policy that’s reminiscent of heartbeat laws in extremist red states.”