Texas emergency care delays left Lynn nearly dead

Lynn Callaway, actively miscarrying in Austin, says two Texas emergency rooms turned her away over a span of 72 hours before she was later treated with antibiotics and abortion medication. Her federal complaint argues the denials violated EMTALA’s requirement

For a few nights in October, Lynn Callaway went to sleep not knowing if she’d wake up to see morning.

She was actively miscarrying at her home in Austin, Texas—an ordeal she says began after she was turned away by two hospital emergency rooms across a 72-hour period. In the meantime, days passed with agonizing pain, chills, fever, and an overwhelming amount of blood loss, her federal complaint says.

Callaway’s husband considered getting her to care outside Texas—driving to New Mexico or flying to Colorado—because. as she put it. the state seemed to be letting her die in front of their eyes. But by then, she was too weak. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, I might bleed out,’” she told HuffPost. “I was thinking: If it’s going to happen. I’d rather it happen here and not in a car or on a plane trying to get somewhere.”.

She described a grim kind of planning during the hours she was deteriorating. “I’m, in that moment, trying to plan for my death,” she said. She and her husband had long discussions about what to do if she didn’t make it. She walked him through her insurance policy so he would know what to do when she was gone. and she encouraged him to move back to Georgia with their 8-year-old son for more family support.

In her complaint, Callaway alleges the two hospitals violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as EMTALA—federal law that requires hospitals to provide abortion care if necessary during a medical emergency to stabilize the patient’s health.

Her attorney, Molly Duane, called the outcome a sign of a broader problem. “There is a myth that miscarriage care. ectopic pregnancy care. care for severe cases of obstetrical complications. that that [care] is still happening and it’s just not. ” Duane said. Duane added: “If a patient like Lynn can’t get care in an urban center like Austin. then who knows what’s happening in places like Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley. ” referring to more remote areas of Texas.

Two hospitals in the complaint are Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Round Rock and St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center. A spokesperson for Baylor Scott & White Medical Center said the hospital could not comment on individual patient care. and that “Our priority is always the health. safety and well-being of every patient we serve.” The spokesperson said care decisions “are guided by the clinical judgment of our physicians and care teams. who evaluate each patient’s condition individually and determine appropriate treatment based on medical needs and applicable legal requirements.” St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Callaway says that for days she was met with a version of medical guidance—wait. then watch—that she believes is shaped by Texas’s abortion ban. Two emergency departments discharged her using what she describes as a “wait and see” approach for early pregnancy loss. In many states with abortion bans. that method has been used to avoid offering a combination of certain abortion medications that is described as the standard of care for early miscarriage.

But the delay, Callaway says, turned dangerous. Like so many women denied miscarriage care since the fall of Roe v. Wade, she developed an infection. By the time the care she says she needed finally arrived, she was “at death’s door.”

Six days, multiple emergency room visits, and repeated calls to her OB-GYN’s office later, Callaway was offered care to fully expel her pregnancy. Her OB-GYN prescribed antibiotics for the infection and abortion medication to complete the miscarriage.

When Callaway asked her OB why the ER doctors had not offered the same medication, her OB-GYN responded that the ER would “have to be damned sure that it’s an actual miscarriage to be offering the pill,” the complaint states.

The federal dispute sits inside a wider fight over EMTALA itself. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, dozens of pregnant women across the country—including in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and elsewhere—have been denied emergency abortion care because they weren’t close enough to death.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has led efforts to challenge EMTALA in court. In 2022. he filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration arguing Texas shouldn’t be required to comply with EMTALA’s emergency-abortion mandate because of the state’s near-total abortion ban. Paxton accused the Biden administration of trying to “transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic” by allowing emergency doctors to provide abortion and miscarriage care.

While the Supreme Court has rejected a different attempt to sidestep emergency abortion care in 2024. the push against EMTALA has continued. Callaway’s attorneys write in the complaint that EMTALA investigations are now being delayed by the Trump administration in part because of Paxton’s 2022 lawsuit. Paxton’s office did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

For Callaway, the law wasn’t an argument—it was the difference between being treated and being left to deteriorate. “No one seems to think this is an emergency but me,” she recalled thinking at the time, according to the complaint.

Texas’s abortion ban currently has no exceptions for rape or incest. and penalties for doctors include revoking medical licenses. $100. 000 in fines. and up to 99 years in prison. Against that backdrop. even offering standard medical care for miscarriage can be treated as illegal in the state. creating fear among clinicians about what they can safely do.

Duane described the tension this way: “Two things can be true at the same time: The fear by doctors can be real, and at the same time many hospitals need to be doing a lot more.”

Callaway’s account shows how the uncertainty played out in real time.

Before her ER visits, she noticed spot bleeding and went into her OB-GYN’s office. The complaint says a nurse practitioner ran several tests and was unable to find a gestational sac in her uterus. The nurse practitioner told Callaway she may have an ectopic pregnancy. ordered more tests to see if her pregnancy hormone levels had changed. and sent her home.

During that time, Callaway’s bleeding increased and she became lethargic. She called her OB-GYN’s office that evening. and the on-call nurse told her her pregnancy hormone levels were “too high” for the office to provide a procedural abortion or medication to manage her miscarriage. The nurse told her to go to the ER.

At the first ER, Callaway says clinicians confirmed she was actively miscarrying, but still discharged her. One nurse at Baylor Scott & White told her she was being released from the hospital because her condition was “not necessarily limb or life threatening. ” according to the complaint. She also described being subjected to an invasive and painful pelvic exam for sexually transmitted diseases. Duane said she found the detail especially striking. noting. “I only ever see STD testing of pregnant women when they’re Black.”.

The complaint says Baylor Scott & White has specific emergency departments for labor and delivery patients, but at seven weeks, Callaway was not far enough into her pregnancy to be seen by those specialists.

At the second hospital—St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center—Callaway says staff told her she was having a miscarriage and that she had developed an infection. but they could not offer care to terminate her pregnancy. The St. David’s doctors told her to call her OB-GYN, but her OB-GYN’s office was closed because it was Saturday.

By the end of the ordeal that unfolded in her home state, Callaway says she finally found a pathway to stabilization only after retained tissue was identified.

She was later able to access abortion pills at her OB-GYN’s office nearly a week after she was first turned away. The complaint says her OB found retained tissue in her uterus and made the decision to offer proper care.

The story did not end there. Months after she recovered. Callaway was on a family vacation in Portugal when she started bleeding profusely. feeling a gush of blood and intense pain. She and her husband drove to an emergency room where doctors found more retained tissue from her miscarriage that her OB-GYN and the hospitals in Texas had missed.

In two other complaints filed with the Texas Medical Board and the Texas Board of Nursing. Callaway wrote that it felt “like going through the miscarriage all over again. ” yet she said she felt safe with the physician who treated her in Portugal. “Even though they did not speak the same language. I trusted this physician more than any of the providers who had cared for me in Texas. ” she wrote.

Texas, for its part, has sought to put physicians on clearer ground. Months before Callaway was turned away from the two emergency rooms, Texas passed a law intended to offer clarity for miscarriage care under its abortion ban.

The law is titled The Life of the Mother Act. It passed after at least three Texas women died from delays in care and after rates of sepsis increased among pregnant women under the state’s abortion ban. The law specified that a pregnant woman’s death does not need to be “imminent” for the abortion ban’s life of the mother exception to apply.

And yet, Callaway’s account suggests the gap between the law’s intent and how care is provided in an emergency room still can be fatal.

That gap is now central to her federal complaint, which alleges two hospitals violated EMTALA by not offering abortion care needed to stabilize her health during a medical emergency.

Whether the case ultimately changes how clinicians practice in Texas’s emergency departments. Callaway’s timeline has already forced a question into the center of the national debate over abortion bans and emergency care: what counts as an emergency—when the patient is bleeding. feverish. and getting sicker by the day. and the system keeps telling her to wait.

Texas politics EMTALA miscarriage care abortion ban Lynn Callaway Life of the Mother Act Ken Paxton emergency room denials Austin Round Rock St. David's Baylor Scott & White medical licenses federal law