By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) - California's attorney general on Monday sued a Catholic hospital accused of refusing to provide an emergency abortion in February to a woman whose water broke prematurely, putting her at risk of potentially life-threatening infection and hemorrhage.
Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta accused Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka of discriminating against pregnant patients and violating the state's law requiring hospitals to provide necessary emergency care.
The lawsuit, filed in Humboldt County Superior Court, seeks a court order to stop the hospital from denying medically necessary abortions in the future, as well as civil penalties.
The hospital said it did not have an immediate comment on the lawsuit.
The woman, Anna Nusslock, was driven to another hospital 12 miles (19 km) away and was dangerously hemorrhaging by the time she reached the operating table, according to the lawsuit.
Nusslock, who was pregnant with twins, said at a press conference on Monday that doctors at Providence agreed that she needed an abortion to avoid life-threatening complications.
However, doctors said that they could not provide one because the Catholic-affiliated hospital's policy prohibited any intervention while they could hear "fetal heart tones" unless her life was in immediate danger, Nusslock added.
Before she left for nearby Mad River Community Hospital, a nurse gave her a bucket full of towels "in case something happens in the car," Nusslock said. The hospital's policy "inflicted on me needless protracted pain, bleeding and trauma," Nusslock added.
Bonta said Nusslock's ordeal was reminiscent of women's experiences in Republican-led states where abortion is banned. In California, Bonta added, the law is clear that hospitals must provide an abortion if it is medically necessary.
"We need hospitals to follow the law, at the bare minimum," Bonta said. "That is not too much to ask. ... If you are a human being, you can see how cruel this was."
The case is the latest in a series of legal battles over emergency abortion in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling that allowed states to ban the procedure. For instance, a Kansas woman in July sued the University of Kansas Health System for refusing to give her a medically necessary abortion in 2022. The case is pending.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a lower court's ruling that federal law on emergency care overrides Idaho's near-total abortion ban in medical emergencies, but litigation over the issue is expected to continue.