Lynn Callaway spent several nights in October unsure if she would survive until morning. Actively miscarrying at her Austin, Texas home, she had been turned away by two hospital emergency rooms within 72 hours, according to a federal complaint filed last week. She remained curled up in bed in agonizing pain, experiencing chills, fever, and severe blood loss.
Standard Care Denied Under Texas Abortion Ban
In Texas, which has one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, the treatment plan for early pregnancy loss is to send patients home to let the miscarriage run its course. Two hospitals Callaway visited discharged her using this “wait and see” method, an approach now common in states with abortion bans to avoid offering abortion medications that are the standard of care for early miscarriage. As a result, Callaway developed an infection, leaving her at death's door with no help.
Her husband suggested driving to New Mexico or flying to Colorado, but Callaway 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. I’m, in that moment, trying to plan for my death.” She discussed her insurance policy with her husband and encouraged him to move back to Georgia with their 8-year-old son for family support.
EMTALA Violations Alleged
Callaway alleges that the two hospitals violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals to provide abortion care if necessary during a medical emergency. Six days, multiple ER visits, and repeated calls to her OB-GYN later, she finally received care to fully expel her pregnancy. Her OB-GYN prescribed antibiotics and abortion medication. When asked why ER doctors did not offer the same, her OB responded that the ER would “have to be damned sure that it’s an actual miscarriage to be offering the pill,” the complaint states.
“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,” said Molly Duane, Callaway’s attorney and litigation director of Amplify Legal. “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.”
Hospital Responses and Legal Context
A spokesperson for Baylor Scott & White Medical Center, one of the hospitals, declined to comment on individual patient care, stating: “Our priority is always the health, safety and well-being of every patient we serve. Across our health system, care decisions are guided by the clinical judgment of our physicians and care teams.” St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center did not respond to a request for comment.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, dozens of pregnant women across 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 the fight against EMTALA, filing a lawsuit in 2022 claiming Texas shouldn’t comply due to its near-total abortion ban. He accused the Biden administration of trying to “transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.” Although the Supreme Court rejected a similar attempt in 2024, attacks on EMTALA continue. President Donald Trump rescinded a Biden-era guideline that abortion rights groups said would lead to more delays.
Callaway’s attorneys write that EMTALA investigations are now being delayed by the Trump administration, partly due to Paxton’s 2022 lawsuit. Paxton’s office did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Texas Abortion Ban and Its Consequences
Texas’ abortion ban has no exceptions for rape or incest and carries penalties for doctors including license revocation, $100,000 fines, and up to 99 years in prison. “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,” Duane said.
Months before Callaway’s ordeal, Texas passed the Life of the Mother Act to clarify miscarriage care under the ban, after at least three Texas women died from delays and sepsis rates increased. The law specified that a woman’s death does not need to be “imminent” for the life-of-mother exception to apply. Yet Callaway still nearly died.
When Callaway first noticed spot bleeding, a nurse practitioner at her OB-GYN’s office ran tests and found no gestational sac, suggesting an ectopic pregnancy. She was sent home. As bleeding increased, an on-call nurse told her pregnancy hormone levels were “too high” for the office to provide care and sent her to the ER. At Baylor Scott & White, a nurse said her condition was “not necessarily limb or life threatening,” and a physician performed an invasive pelvic exam for STDs. “I only ever see STD testing of pregnant women when they’re Black,” Duane noted. Both hospitals had labor and delivery emergency departments, but at seven weeks, Callaway was not far enough along to be seen.
At St. David’s, doctors confirmed a miscarriage and infection but said they could not offer care to terminate the pregnancy, telling her to call her OB-GYN, whose office was closed for the weekend. “No one seems to think this is an emergency but me,” Callaway recalled.
Aftermath and Continued Complications
Abortion clinics once provided most early miscarriage management, but none remain in Texas. Over 80% of miscarriages occur in the first trimester. Callaway finally accessed abortion pills nearly a week later when her OB found retained tissue. Months later, on vacation in Portugal, she started bleeding profusely. An ER there found more retained tissue missed by Texas providers. “It felt like going through the miscarriage all over again. Yet for the first time since the ordeal began, I felt safe with a physician,” Callaway wrote in complaints to the Texas Medical Board and Board of Nursing. “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.”
