KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Nearly one year after the U.S. Supreme court rolled back rights to abortion, and states enacted trigger ban laws, woman all across the country have been denied emergency abortion care.
In Texas, several women are suing the state for failing to provide abortion care, despite facing serious medical complications. One of the women got septicemia and is now infertile.
It's a situation eerily similar to Mylissa Farmer, from Joplin, Missouri.
At 41 years old, Farmer and her now husband learned they'd soon be called by a new name — mom and dad.
"It was just a beautiful moment," Farmer said. "We actually didn’t even sleep that night."
The couple was having a girl. Maeve, would be her name.
"She was named after a warrior queen," Farmer said.
The couple made it to every prenatal care checkup, followed dietary guidelines; Farmer even had genetic testing done to ensure she had a health baby.
"We were just approaching the 18 week mark," Farmer said. "We finally felt like we go through the woods of the first trimester."
One day after a checkup, which showed a healthy baby, Farmer awoke to stunning sensation.
"I woke up to a rush of fluid and I knew something was wrong," she said.
Farmer and her boyfriend drove to the nearest emergency room at Freeman Hospital in Joplin.
There, doctors confirmed Farmer's water broke prematurely and diagnosed her with premature rupture of membranes (PROM).
The baby girl Farmer carried with her for weeks was not going to survive.
"There are no words for that," Farmer said. "That level of shock and disbelief, it’s the worst horror movie of your life."
It's a horror movie that played out over the course of three days.
The first hospital
While at Freeman, doctors warned Farmer of the health consequences she faced if she didn't have an emergency abortion.
"We were facing blood loss, infection, clots. She began to inform me of the symptoms of sepsis and things I would experience," Farmer said. "Very, very scary stuff— things I would never want to go through."
The loss of baby Maeve was tragic for Farmer.
But, the care, or lack thereof, only expanding upon the horror story Farmer was living.
"At the same time, she said that the only way to correct this is to terminate the pregnancy, but that they could not do that, that the law isn’t clear enough because we still got heart beat," she said.
Farmer's doctor gave her advice.
"She told us to use this time to leave the state," Farmer said.
The second hospital
Farmer said she called several clinics in Kansas.
"Nobody was willing to help us," she said.
That's when Farmer and her boyfriend made the nearly three hour drive to University of Kansas Health System located in Kansas.
Farmer thought, "Kansas Health hospital is the largest in the area, they are the best, they're a teaching hospital, they're going to have the best care and they're going to be able to do anything I need to save my life."
"They offered us two options," Farmer said. "That we would be able to deliver or gave us a surgical option."
It was an opportunity for Farmer to grieve the loss of her baby without the fear of losing her own life.
"That’s the thing we needed the most was to be able to say goodbye and hold her," Farmer said.
But, the doctors and medical staff changed their mind.
"About 15 minutes later, the doctors came back and tell us none of the options were available," Farmer said. "That the legal team says it's too politically heated in this political environment right now and that I need to return to my hospital and wait."
Back to hospital #1
Farmer and her boyfriend got in the car again.
They drove the three hours back to Freeman hospital in Joplin to "wait it out."
"I was clearly in an emergency and for them to say that they can't help me for politics is terrifying," Farmer said. "It broke that iron clad trust I had in our system."
While at Freeman hospital, Farmer was treated with Tylenol for pain and monitored.
Doctors hesitate to treat
In May, a federal investigation determined both Freeman Hospital and University of Kansas Health System broke the law by failing to provide Farmer with emergency care.
University of Kansas Health System issued the following statement that goes against the investigation's findings:
"The care provided to the patient was reviewed by the hospital and found to be in accordance with hospital policy. There is a process with CMS for this complaint and we respect that process. The University of Kansas Health System follows federal and Kansas law, including parameters specific to our health system included in the legislative act that created The University of Kansas Hospital Authority, in providing appropriate, stabilizing, and quality care to all patients, including obstetric patients. Specifically, our providers are limited to performing abortions only if there is an emergent need to save a patient’s life, or to prevent serious and irreversible harm to a patient’s major bodily function. Our physicians can and do perform abortions."
Yvonne Lindgren, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, said doctors and medical staff are unsure of when it's legal for them to treat in cases of emergency abortion based on subjectivity of the word, emergency.
"How close to death does a patient have to be?," Lingred said. "Is it 100 percent? Is it 30 to 50 percent?"
Medical practice lawsuits are no longer the greatest fear among medical staff, Lindgren said.
"What we're seeing across the country is that in places where there's an abortion ban, hospitals will not provide abortions where there continues to be a fetal heart tone, even as the pregnant person is starting to show signs of sepsis," Lindgren said. "What's happened is the criminal bans, the threat of criminal prosecution and loss of licensure has essentially eclipsed the fear of medical malpractice. They're much more willing to defend against medical malpractice than they are against prosecution."
As pregnant women are turned away, like Farmer, some have gone septic and are now dealing with ongoing medical issues.
"All people who may become pregnant are now at greater risk of harm and death," Lindgren said.
The clinic that helped
As Farmer waited for her condition to worsen in a hospital bed in Joplin, she received a call from an abortion clinic in Illinois.
"They said, 'We heard about your case. We understand it's a medical emergency. Can you be here tomorrow morning?'" Farmer said. "I was like, 'Absolutely, yes.'"
Farmer and her boyfriend got in the car again.
Seventy-five hours after her water broke, they drove to a third state.
This time, the clinic was able to perform the operation and Farmer was able to say goodbye to her daughter.
"To have these hospitals deny you the care in the middle of this emergency...it's horrifying," Farmer said. "It's horrifying that I'm not the only one this is going to happen to."
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