woman diagnosed with rupturing ectopic pregnancy. TX hospital told her to go home and wait [View all]

An ectopic pregnancy put her life at risk. A Texas hospital refused to treat her.
The 25-year-old woman and her mother blame the state’s abortion ban for a delay in care that doctors say put her “in extreme danger of losing her life”



The law that has prohibited abortions in Texas since Roe v. Wade was overturned now explicitly allows doctors to treat ectopic pregnancies. But when doctors at Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital evaluated Norris-De La Cruz last week, they refused to terminate the pregnancy, saying there was some chance the pregnancy was still viable, Norris-De La Cruz recalled. Instead, they advised her and her mother to go home and wait, according to medical records reviewed by The Washington Post.

Norris-De La Cruz ultimately received emergency surgery about 24 hours later at a different hospital in the area, at which point her ectopic pregnancy had already started to rupture. The OB/GYN who performed the procedure said that, if Norris-De La Cruz had waited much longer, she would have been “in extreme danger of losing her life.”

“I was scared I was going to ... lose my entire reproductive system if they waited too long,” Norris-De La Cruz said in an interview two days after her surgery. “I knew it could happen at any moment.”

Her case highlights a chilling reality of post-Roe America: Medical exceptions to abortion bans have not stopped doctors from turning away patients with significant pregnancy complications, often with harrowing consequences. Their stories underscore the messy collision between abortion laws and medical diagnoses — and the struggles of doctors and hospitals to navigate what many say are inadequate legal protections to treat women with life-threatening conditions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/23/texas-woman-ectopic-pregnancy-abortion/