Federal complaint filed on behalf of Joplin woman

Jan. 30—The National Women's Law Center on Monday filed a complaint on behalf of a Joplin woman, Mylissa Farmer, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights, contending she "was denied emergency abortion care by multiple hospitals in Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois after her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy."

No hospitals were named in a statement, but previous statements by the NWLC have identified one of the hospitals as Freeman Health System in Joplin and the other as the University of Kansas Medical Center.

According to the complaint, "these hospitals discriminated against her on the basis of sex in violation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, the first federal law to broadly prohibit sex discrimination in health care, by denying her the care necessary to preserve her life and health."

NWLC had previously filed complaints with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights and the Kansas Human Rights Commission against hospitals in Missouri and Kansas for discrimination, and also filed a complaint with the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Michelle Banker, Farmer's attorney and the director of reproductive rights and health litigation at NWLC, said in a statement: "Abortion is time sensitive and sometimes life-saving health care. When a hospital offers emergency care to everyone but refuses to provide emergency care that only pregnant people need, that is sex discrimination, pure and simple. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act required the hospitals from which Ms. Farmer sought care to treat her, just as they do everyone else. Their discriminatory refusal to do so not only violated the law — it put her life at risk. We call on OCR to take swift action to make clear to hospitals nationwide that these dangerous refusals of care violate federal law and will not be tolerated."

The organization also states that "this type of sex discrimination has only increased after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org. decision" last year and said in its statement that denials of emergency abortion care "can lead to severe infections, hemorrhaging, and other serious medical conditions, and which may result in the loss of their reproductive capacity or death."

Reached for comment late Monday night, officials with Freeman said they had no statement to make at that time.

According to previous news reports, Farmer was nearly 18 weeks pregnant last August when she began experiencing complications, including bleeding, cramping and abdominal pressure. Previous filings by the National Women's Law Center said Farmer had experienced preterm, premature rupture of membranes and that the loss of the fetus was imminent with "zero" chance of survival.

She went to Freeman, where she had been for a visit just days earlier, and doctors recommended terminating the pregnancy, but "legal departments at both hospitals (Freeman and KU Med Center) overrode the doctors' medical judgment and denied the emergency abortion care she needed," NLWC said in its previous complaint with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The NWLC argued the decisions "directly contravened EMTALA, which requires hospitals to provide emergency care irrespective of state law, including emergency abortion care that a state might deem to be illegal." EMTALA is the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

The Missouri Independent last fall reported that the Joplin hospital "is apparently the first in the nation to be investigated for possibly violating federal law by telling a woman experiencing an emergency that she needed to terminate her pregnancy to protect her health but that the abortion could not take place in the state."

Farmer and her boyfriend also drove to the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, and were told the same thing they had been told at Freeman, according to the NWLC.

According to the National Women's Law Center, Farmer, on her own, "found treatment at a clinic in Granite City, Illinois."

Farmer's case became part of the recent U.S. Senate election campaign, after Democratic Senate candidate Trudy Busch Valentine started running an ad featuring Farmer, who blamed Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Valentine's Republican opponent in the election, for her doctors denying her an emergency abortion. Schmitt's attorney, Ed Greim, called the ad defamatory, threatening possible legal action.

Schmitt, who won the election in November, had issued a proclamation the previous June putting Missouri's law into effect and making Missouri the first state to outlaw nearly all abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.