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KANSAS CITY, KAN. — July 30, 2024 — Today, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), alongside Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, PLLC, and Dugan Schlozman LLC, filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Kansas Health System and the University of Kansas Hospital Authority on behalf of Mylissa Farmer, a patient denied a life-saving emergency abortion for pregnancy complications.
The lawsuit claims the University of Kansas Health System, which is governed by the Hospital Authority, violated a federal law that requires emergency rooms to provide treatment necessary to stabilize patients with an emergency medical condition. The lawsuit also alleges the hospital violated Kansas nondiscrimination law when they turned her away because of her pregnancy-related condition.
“What happened to me should never happen to anyone. Denying me care not only put my life at risk but inflicted irreparable trauma, physical and mental suffering, and financial hardship on me and my husband,” Ms. Farmer said. “I endured a horror no one should ever have to face. Through this lawsuit, I hope to achieve justice and help prevent others from suffering the same experience.”
The action is one of the first lawsuits filed under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, or EMTALA, by an individual denied emergency abortion care since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. EMTALA applies to any emergency room within a Medicare-funded hospital.
Last month, the Supreme Court issued a decision that temporarily reinstated a lower-court ruling requiring hospitals to perform emergency abortions to protect the health of the pregnant person as required under EMTALA, notwithstanding Idaho’s strict abortion ban. The decision blocks the Idaho ban to the extent it prohibits emergency abortions that EMTALA requires. That decision only reinforces how the University of Kansas Health System flouted its obligations under EMTALA by denying Ms. Farmer care.
“Every patient should receive the care they need when they need it. Ms. Farmer was unjustly turned away despite laws like EMTALA that have always protected pregnant people in medical emergencies and require hospitals to provide stabilizing emergency abortion care,” said Michelle Banker, senior director of litigation for reproductive rights and health at NWLC. “The hospital’s treatment of Ms. Farmer not only violated EMTALA, it violated Kansas nondiscrimination law, too: a hospital that provides emergency care to all but sends home pregnant patients to suffer possible hemorrhage, sepsis, loss of fertility, or even death has discriminated based on sex, pure and simple. We are committed to holding the hospital accountable and will not stop fighting until all people can get the abortion care they need.”
Ms. Farmer is seeking a declaration that the hospital violated federal and Kansas law by turning her away and financial compensation for the harm she suffered.
The complaint can be found here.
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