EUREKA, Calif. (CN) — A Catholic hospital in Northern California will now provide emergency abortion care to its patients following a lawsuit by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Bonta’s office announced Tuesday that it has secured a stipulation from the defendant Providence St. Joseph Hospital ensuring it complies with state law while the case proceeds.
“While Providence St. Joseph should have been complying with state law up to now, thereby avoiding the harm and trauma to Californians they caused, I am pleased that the hospital has agreed to fully comply with the law going forward, ensuring access to life-saving health services including emergency abortion care,” said Attorney General Bonta in a statement.
Up until recently, Providence St. Joseph did not provide abortion services as a matter of policy and barred doctors from terminating a pregnancy, even when the pregnancy was not viable or if doing so could potentially save a patient’s life.
Last month, Bonta’s office announced a lawsuit against the hospital in Humboldt County Superior Court seeking a preliminary injunction to make sure it wouldn’t continue to enforce its policy.
Under the stipulation, the Eureka-based hospital specifically agrees to allow its physicians to terminate a patient’s pregnancy whenever they decide that failing to would seriously endanger a patient’s life.
The stipulation, which is subject to court approval, resolves the Attorney General’s preliminary injunction motion, and Providence voluntarily agreed to comply with all the terms of the Attorney General’s proposed injunction. The lawsuit remains ongoing.
In the past, Bonta has also pointed to the hospital’s abortion policy as being incompatible with state law. Abortion is a constitutional right in California, and he claims Providence St. Joseph Hospital Eureka violated civil rights law by refusing to provide an abortion to patient Anna Nusslock.
In February, Nusslock was more than three months into her pregnancy with twins when she began bleeding and experiencing pain. Her water had broken. She went to Providence St. Joseph Hospital with her husband and was told her children couldn’t survive. Also, the risk to her own health increased the longer she waited. She was told that if she drove to another hospital for an abortion, she would hemorrhage and die.
At the time, Providence wouldn’t perform an abortion on Nusslock because it detected a fetal heartbeat, and it didn’t deem her life to be sufficiently at risk to merit the procedure.
Nusslock declined a helicopter ride to another facility, as it would cost $40,000 and her husband couldn’t travel with her. They opted to drive to another health care facility 20 minutes away. Before she left, a nurse tried to give her a bucket filled with towels, saying she might need them.
At a press conference last month, Nusslock said she wanted to tell her story so others don’t experience the same life trauma she did.
“My daughters deserved better, and I deserved better,” she said.
Nusslock and her husband have tried since 2021 to have children and were excited and hopeful when they learned she was pregnant with twin girls.
“I was hoping they were going to grow up and save the world,” Nusslock said.
Bonta in the suit states that Providence’s actions broke the law. The state’s emergency services law prohibits “patient dumping,” and requires all licensed facilities to have an emergency room that’s open to the public. That law outlines requirements for transferring a patient, which don’t apply when someone needs immediate care.
Additionally, the hospital was required under the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act to give all patients equal access to its services. Failing to provide the necessary emergency care was unlawful business conduct, Bonta says.
“Absent intervention, these policies will continue to threaten irreparable harm to the health and life of pregnant patients,” Bonta writes in the suit.
Providence St. Joseph’s Hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the stipulation.