Texas hospitals they allege turned them away for emergency care, risking their lives and violating federal law.

Two women have filed complaints against two Texas hospitals for allegedly denying them treatment for ectopic pregnancies, which they say put their lives at risk and breached federal law.

In a complaint to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kyleigh Thurman said that in February 2023, Ascension Seton Williamson Hospital in Round Rock, Tex., discharged her without treating her ectopic pregnancy or transferring her to another hospital. It denied her treatment again when she returned days later with vaginal bleeding, she said.

The delay caused her fallopian tube to rupture, she said. According to the complaint, the hospital treated her only after her OB/GYN “pleaded” with staff to provide the necessary care.

“For weeks, I was in and out of emergency rooms trying to get the abortion that I needed to save my future fertility and life,” she was quoted as saying in a news release Monday from the Center for Reproductive Rights, whose attorneys are representing both women.

Texas law, which bans abortion in most cases, makes an exception for ectopic pregnancies, which cannot result in a live birth.

“None of this should have happened to me, and I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Thurman added.

In her complaint, Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz said that in February, Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital discharged her without treatment for an ectopic pregnancy or a transfer to another hospital. When she sought a second opinion within hours, she was rushed into emergency surgery at a different facility, she said.

Four OB/GYNs who reviewed Norris-De La Cruz’s medical records for The Washington Post, with her permission, said that she should have been offered emergency surgery and that they suspected Texas’s abortion ban played a role in how she was advised, The Post reported in February.

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“That should have been a bread-and-butter slam-dunk diagnosis,” Clayton Alfonso, an OB/GYN at Duke University, said at that time.

An Ascension spokesperson said that “while we cannot speak to the specifics of this case at this time, Ascension is committed to providing quality care to all who seek our services.”

Texas Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It told The Post in February that the hospital’s top priority is “providing our patients with safe, high-quality care.”

“Treatment decisions are individualized based on a patient’s clinical condition and we believe the care provided to the patient in this case was appropriate,” Kimberly Walton, the director of media relations for Texas Health, said at the time, before Norris-De La Cruz’s complaint.

The women’s attorneys are seeking an investigation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or other relevant authorities into the incidents, as well as the imposition of “all appropriate penalties” for any unlawful conduct.

Kyleigh Thurman alleged in her complaint that Ascension Seton Williamson Hospital discharged her without treating her ectopic pregnancy. (Eric Gay/AP)

The women “nearly died and suffered permanent damage to their reproductive organs” because of the delay in treatment, the center said.

Ectopic pregnancies form outside the uterus, typically in the fallopian tubes, and are never viable. Sometimes ectopic pregnancies dissolve on their own, but if not, they must be treated with medication or surgery to prevent the fallopian tube from rupturing, which causes severe bleeding and is life-threatening.

In its statement, the Center for Reproductive Rights said that “across the country, pregnant people in states with abortion bans are being forced to either wait until they are near death to receive care or are turned away altogether, even for care that is technically legal under state law.”

The complaints, dated Aug. 6, are pursuant to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which regulates public access to emergency services and requires certain hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with emergency medical conditions or transfer them to an appropriate hospital.