Leopards Ate My Face

According to the HHS secretary:

“While many state laws have recently changed, it’s important to know that the federal EMTALA requirements have not changed, and continue to require that healthcare professionals offer treatment, including abortion care, that the provider reasonably determines is necessary to stabilize the patient’s emergency medical condition,” Becerra wrote.

“The hospital’s noncompliance creates a reasonable expectation that an adverse outcome resulting in serious injury, harm, impairment, or death will occur to current or future individuals in similar situations if not immediately corrected,” the report states.

“Although her doctors advised her that her condition could rapidly deteriorate, they also advised that they could not provide her with the care that would prevent infection, hemorrhage, and potentially death because, they said, the hospital policies prohibited treatment that could be considered an abortion,” Becerra wrote. “This was a violation of the EMTALA protections that were designed to protect patients like her.”

Farmer suffered what doctors call preterm premature rupture of membranes — her water broke, followed by vaginal bleeding, abdominal pressure and cramping, the Springfield News-Leader reported in an October article. Doctors told her she would be unlikely to carry the child to term, and doing so increased her chances of infection or other severe outcome.

Medical errors are a serious issue in the US, harming over 400,000 people and killing over 200,000 in a single year. This is a clear-cut example of a harmful medical error.