California Sues Catholic Hospital for Denying Woman Necessary Abortion Care

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced earlier this week that the state is suing a Catholic hospital for refusing to provide an abortion to a patient who was in critical need of the procedure to preserve her health and potentially save her life.

In February, a woman named Anna Nusslock, who was carrying twins, went into early labor at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Nusslock was told by doctors at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka that neither fetus was viable, and that the best option for her health was to have an abortion.

However, St. Joseph does not provide abortions so long as a fetus’s heartbeat is detectable, unless a pregnant person’s life is “sufficiently at risk.” Doctors told Nusslock that, in her case, both twins’ heartbeats would have to be undetectable in order for them to perform the procedure.

“I needed an abortion so that my husband didn’t lose both of his daughters and his wife in one night,” Nusslock said at a press conference on Monday.

The policy of that hospital is “reminiscent of heartbeat laws in extremist red states,” Bonta said during the same press conference, where he announced the lawsuit.

Rather than provide Nusslock with a potentially lifesaving abortion, her doctors had a different recommendation: Go to a hospital hundreds of miles away in San Francisco. They told Nusslock that she should take a medical helicopter to get there, as the driving distance was too far and would result in her hemorrhaging and likely dying. The flight would have cost her an additional $40,000 in services.

Instead, Nusslock went to a hospital about 12 miles away, where she received an abortion at a labor delivery unit — however, that hospital is set to close later this month, and thus won’t be an option for pregnant people in similar situations in the future.

Bonta says that the hospital broke the law by refusing to provide Nusslock with an abortion. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, several conservative states have implemented draconian laws restricting access to abortion or banning it outright, but California has expanded its abortion protections. As Nusslock’s case shows, however, hospitals in the state, like St. Joseph, are still denying medically necessary abortion care, the attorney general said.

“We’ve heard tragic stories from across the country of women denied life-saving treatment, but it usually comes out of states that have outlawed abortion,” Bonta said at a press conference. “We’re not immune from this problem.”

“We are taking action to make sure they never do it again,” Bonta added.

In a press release on his office’s website, Bonta explained that the lawsuit was necessary to ensure that St. Joseph and other religiously affiliated hospitals complied with the law. Said Bonta:

With today’s lawsuit, I want to make this clear for all Californians: abortion care is healthcare. You have the right to access timely and safe abortion services. At the California Department of Justice, we will use the full force of this office to hold accountable those who, like Providence, are breaking the law.

Since the overturn of Roe, there have been dozens of cases of pregnant people being denied critically needed abortion care, highlighting how state laws are putting people’s lives at risk. Last month, the first known death from an anti-abortion law after Roe’s overturn was reported — Amber Nicole Thurman, who died in Georgia in 2022 because that state’s laws require pregnant people to be near death before undergoing the procedure. Thurman had waited 20 excruciating hours before doctors finally performed the abortion, but by then it was too late. She died shortly after, leaving behind her 6-year-old son.