After a two-year battle, Kyleigh Thurman got acknowledgment of a simple truth: a Texas hospital, while under the state’s abortion ban, broke the law when it didn’t immediately treat her ectopic pregnancy .
But now, the Trump administration is potentially making it even harder for other women in banned abortion states to fight back in a similar way.
Thurman, now 36, filed a complaint against Ascension Seton Williamson Hospital in Round Rock, Texas in 2024 under the terms of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. The federal law, known as EMTALA, requires that emergency rooms provide care to anyone who arrives at that door, regardless of their ability to pay or any other extenuating circumstances.
But when Thurman arrived at Ascension’s ER in February 2023, the complaint alleges that staff refused to treat her ectopic pregnancy, which is when an embryo implants somewhere else in the body, usually a fallopian tube, rather than the uterus. The pregnancy is nonviable, and can be life-threatening if not removed.
The complaint states that on February 17, Thurman first went to her hometown emergency room after testing positive on a pregnancy test and under the guidance of her OBGYN, who suspected based on her heavy bleeding that the pregnancy was ectopic. Staff could not locate a pregnancy in her uterus, but sent her home without giving her medication to end the pregnancy. She then went to Ascension on Feb. 21, because it was a bigger hospital that stocked methotrexate, unlike her hometown ER.
At Ascension, staff found “no intrauterine pregnancy, a two-centimeter ‘rounded structure’ on her right fallopian tube, and slightly decreased hcG levels,” all of which, the complaint says, are signs of an ectopic pregnancy. However, staff “denied Ms. Thurman methotrexate or any other treatment for ectopic pregnancy” and told her to come back in two days. As the complaint notes, this reticence is likely due to Texas’ restrictive abortion ban, which doesn’t allow for the procedure after six weeks of gestation. The harsh penalties for performing an abortion in the state include up to life in prison, leaving medical professionals wary to treat even a clearly nonviable pregnancy due to fear of punishment.
Thurman’s symptoms didn’t improve, and she returned a few days later to the hospital and was finally given an injection of methotrexate which stops cell growth and dissolves existing cells to end the pregnancy. But, per Thurman’s claim, at that point it was too late. Days later, Thurman experienced “blinding pain” and began bleeding heavily. Her ectopic pregnancy had burst in her fallopian tube, and she risked bleeding out. She underwent emergency surgery, where doctors removed her right tube to save her life.
“Kyleigh was overwhelmed by the horror of the ordeal. The removal of the fallopian tube that was necessitated by the delay in treatment likely will impact her ability to have a child in the future,” reads the complaint.
After her ordeal, Thurman tells Glamour, she was so gaslit and disoriented that while she knew in her gut she had been mistreated, she didn’t understand exactly how. It wasn’t until she reviewed her paperwork with attorneys at the Center for Reproductive Rights that her intuition was validated, and she realized that the way she was treated was not only wrong, but illegal, because the staff had a duty to treat her ectopic pregnancy under EMTALA.
[In a statement to the Associated Press, Ascension Williamson declined to comment on any specifics of Thurman’s case, saying only that it “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”]
Once she knew what had happened, Thurman says she also quickly knew that she had to fight back.
“I am in my 30s, I know myself,” she says. “I’m a really strong and independent woman [but] I was confused and gaslit and manipulated. I found my way through it, but if I had been in my 20s or my teens, I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it simply because of how overwhelming and traumatic and disorienting the experience was.”
She thought of her younger self, and all the other women out there who may have not even realized how they’d been mistreated if something similar happened to them.
“They don’t even know that they’ve been a victim because it’s so prevalent and our culture for women to be victimized and then just be like, that’s your burden to carry,” she says. “You don’t even know you’re a victim. It’s just assumed that you’ll deal with it.”
And nearly two years later, she won. On June 4, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a report agreeing that the hospital had “failed” to provide the required care to Thurman under EMTALA. The finding was a relief for Thurman.
“It was really validating, because a lot of people didn’t believe me,” she says. “In Texas, ectopic pregnancies are included in the [abortion ban] exception. So people thought I was lying because they were like, ‘Well, that’s the only explanation. You’re not telling the truth.’ So, the whole experience for me was really difficult because I was first of all a victim. Second of all, I was told I was a liar about my experience or that I was overreacting for my experience. So having that being in my favor really gave me a lot of peace and some closure.”
However, the timing of the report’s release was bittersweet. Just the day before, the Trump administration rescinded guidance that was released under President Biden in 2022. The guidance made it clear that EMTALA applied to pregnant people experiencing a medical crisis, regardless of a state abortion law. In other words, the Biden administration made it clear to hospitals and other medical personnel that they were legally required to treat someone like Thurman, even if they were operating in a restrictive environment when it came to ending a pregnancy.
But now, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is withdrawing that guidance, which essentially changes nothing because hospitals are still legally required to treat patients under EMTALA, says Molly Duane, a staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights. But what she and others in the space are worried it does do is muddy the waters even further, which could lead to more outcomes like Thurman’s.
“Why would you take away the guidance that’s supposed to help doctors?” Duane continues. “The real issue here is there is an atmosphere of confusion that is exacerbated by the Trump administration’s actions. From what we’ve observed from restrictive abortion laws and what’s happening in the Trump administration, it seems to be that the confusion is part of the plan. Because what we’ve seen hospitals do in reality when they’re faced with a confusing law is just kind of clam up and say, ‘we’re not going to do anything.’ And that’s where we’re having all of these cases.”
For Thurman, having her complaint be validated at the same time as the guidance being rescinded led to lots of mixed emotions, and concerns.
“To say that the administration does not support that position is pretty alarming or concerning, because I don’t know why people wouldn’t want to support stabilizing a woman’s life when her life is in danger,” she says.
She urges any other woman who believes they have been mistreated since the fall of Roe v. Wade to know they can use their voice for change.
“What I want people to take away from this is how powerful you can be when you stand in your truth and really push back, especially when you do it in the correct channel or the right way,” she says. “Stand up for yourself, [know] how powerful your voice can be and how it is important to, no matter how small you feel like you are or how small you feel like your life is, or how small you feel like this one action is, it’s actually not. It can be really big.”
The post She Lost Her Fallopian Tube Due to Texas’ Abortion Ban—And Fought Back appeared first on Glamour.
