Illinois Woman Denied Treatment for Ectopic Pregnancy

10.14.25

Click to skip ahead: In Care Denied, a woman was denied emergency treatment for her ectopic pregnancy—in Illinois, of all places. Attacks on Abortion Pills reports that Republicans are calling on the FDA & HHS to take mifepristone off the market. In the States, news from Ohio, Missouri, Florida, and more. Everyday Heroes tips our hat to the New York county clerk taking on Texas’ attorney general, despite the risks. Strategy Watch checks in on what Alliance Defending Freedom is up to. And in Ballot Box, news from Virginia, and a new multi-million dollar campaign to drive out pro-choice voters in battleground states.

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Care Denied

Every once in a while, we get a stark reminder that living in a pro-choice state doesn’t protect you from conservative abortion policies. This week, that reality-check comes from an Illinois woman who was denied emergency care for her ectopic pregnancy by an anti-abortion OBGYN. Watch her TikTok here, but Harmonie (who prefers to keep her last name private) was kind enough to share her story with Abortion, Every Day over the phone yesterday.

The 28-year-old—who had to go to multiple healthcare centers and hospitals before getting the care she needed—tells me that she was sure she was going to die. “I was 100% convinced,” she says. That’s in no small part because Harmonie lost her right fallopian tube in another ectopic pregnancy a few years ago. So when she was diagnosed again last week, she knew how dangerous the situation was—and how important it was to get quick treatment.

The emergency room knew, too. They rushed her to an OBGYN specialist after detecting a mass on her left tube. But the doctor turned Harmonie away, telling the young woman and her husband that she wouldn’t intervene because there was “a 1% chance” the ectopic pregnancy was viable. She even led the pair to believe it was illegal for her to end the pregnancy.

“I knew Illinois was a blue state,” Harmonie tells me. “But she kept repeating, ‘you’re not going to force me to give you an abortion.’”

After telling Harmonie to just “Google” another hospital, she sent the terrified young woman to a medical center without the capacity to treat her. By the time Harmonie went to yet another hospital, 40 minutes away from home, she was begging nurses in the hallway of the emergency room to help her. “Please someone listen to me, I don’t want to die,” she said.

Finally, someone did listen: doctors gave Harmonie methotrexate to help end the pregnancy—and expressed shock that her previous OBGYN hadn’t helped.

Here’s what Harmonie didn’t know: this particular OBGYN was affiliated with Ascension—a multi-billion dollar Catholic health system that’s been at the center of similar firestorms. A federal investigation actually found that an Ascension hospital in Texas violated EMTALA when they refused another woman care for her ectopic pregnancy in 2023.

AED also shared a report last year showing how Ascension was fueling the maternal mortality crisis:

The Catholic Hospital System Killing Women

We’re hearing more of these stories every day; there are multiple suits right now, for example, against religiously-affiliated hospitals in California that denied women emergency care.

It makes me wonder if there’s a way to help patients identify healthcare providers affiliated with religious institutions—or those who might refuse emergency abortion care. Yelp and Google sometimes flag listings for crisis pregnancy centers, warning users that they may not provide real medical care. Could we do something similar?

In a moment when conservative legal groups are working to make it easier for doctors, nurses, pharmacists and more to refuse all kinds of treatment based on their personal beliefs, it feels like the kind of thing we might want to consider.

Just thinking out loud, if any activists want to take the idea and run with it!

In the meantime, I’m grateful to Harmonie for sharing her story. Republicans are hoping we stay quiet, so every voice and experience matters.

If you want to learn more about abortion storytelling—or have your own story to share—check out Abortion in America and We Testify.

Attacks on Abortion Pills

Conservatives’ full-court press against abortion pills is here: Republican senators are demanding that HHS and the FDA take mifepristone off the market as an “imminent hazard,” citing the junk science and bullshit messaging AED has been warning about for years. And like anti-abortion activists, these lawmakers are seizing on the FDA’s recent approval of a generic mifepristone to ramp up pressure on the Trump administration.

In a letter sent last week to agency heads Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marty Makary, GOP senators claimed current policies allow “abortion pills to be obtained by abusers, traffickers, and even minors,” and reference a widely debunked study that says mifepristone is dangerous.

The letter goes beyond regurgitating anti-abortion talking points: the senators are calling on the agencies to end any distribution of mifepristone, suspend approval of the new generic, block pharmacies from dispensing the medication, and force providers to prescribe the pills in-person. It’s that last demand they’re most keen on—because it would effectively end the shipping of abortion medication as we know it.

Ending abortion pills by mail has been at the top of conservatives’ wish list for years: One in four abortions in the U.S. are provided via telehealth, making it easier for women in ban states to safely access care. Republicans hate that.

And while the Trump administration has already given the anti-abortion movement plenty of wins this year—from the ‘defunding’ of Planned Parenthood to increasingly explicit attacks on birth control—they still haven’t delivered on abortion pills. The most they’ve offered is a so-called safety review of mifepristone announced by HHS and the FDA last month:

BREAKING: The Trump Administration is "Reviewing" Abortion Pills

So when the FDA approved a generic form of mifepristone—even though the agency didn’t have much of a choice—it was an opportunity to pile on. Last week, anti-abortion activists slammed the agency, claiming the decision contradicted their promise to review mifepristone.

Now, instead of working to reopen the government, GOP lawmakers are wasting everyone’s time trying to micromanage abortion rights and bully the FDA into doing their dirty work.

In the States

It’s not just U.S. senators using junk science to attack abortion medication: Ohio Republicans are trying to weaponize a debunked study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) to get around the fact that the state constitution now protects abortion rights.

House Bill 324 would require medications to be prescribed in person if they’re shown to cause “severe adverse effects in more than 5% of users.” And wouldn’t you know it? The EPPC’s nonsense study conveniently purports that mifepristone causes “severe adverse effects” in over 10% of patients.

As the Ohio Capital Journal points out, the bill could end up being a de facto ban on telehealth abortion medication.

HB 324 would also require doctors to “inform the patient that the drug causes one or more severe adverse effects,” and a mandatory follow-up appointment.

It’s a slick move: Voters passed abortion rights protections in 2023, and Republicans have been trying to skirt the amendment ever since. Their go-to move has been dressing up restrictions—like a 24-hour waiting period—as health and safety measures. This latest bill is no exception: it would be called the “Patient Protection Act.”

I guess the “Fucking Voters Over Act” didn’t play well in focus groups.

While we’re on states blatantly trying to undermine democracy, let’s check in on Missouri—where Attorney General Catherine Hanaway just issued a subpoena for Planned Parenthood patient records. As we told you last week, the move is part of a broader effort to keep Republicans’ abortion restrictions in place despite—you guessed it!—a pro-choice ballot measure passed this November.

KCUR’s “Kansas City Today” dedicated a segment today to the legal battle, if you’d like to learn more:

Finally, consider this your daily reminder that Republicans know exactly how much voters hate abortion bans—they just don’t care. Over the weekend, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke about the state’s recent ballot measures on marijuana and abortion rights, admitting, “Let’s just be honest, they were pushing issues in which probably more people agreed with them than agreed with me or agreed with us.”

He even conceded that “a lot of Floridians are not necessarily pro-life.” But that didn’t matter, he said, because opposing abortion was the “morally right thing to do,” and protecting access would have been “very costly in terms of human lives.”

Apparently, the lives of women lost to abortion bans—like the two we know of in neighboring Georgia—don’t count. And we’ll likely never know the full toll of these laws, since Republican-led states are deliberately hiding post-Dobbs maternal mortality data.

But whatever helps Ron DeSantis sleep at night.

Quick hits:

• WJMN/WBUP takes us inside a Michigan clinic that may be the first in the nation to deliver abortion services in urgent care;

• Bay City News shares the both ordinary and remarkable story of a Texas woman who traveled to California for abortion care;

• And Democracy Docket digs into the attacks on free speech in South Carolina’s SB 323.

Everyday Heroes

We just had to flag this terrific Texas Monthly profile of Taylor Bruck, the New York county clerk taking on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

A refresher: Paxton is suing New York provider Dr. Margaret Carpenter for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a Dallas woman last year. The overarching goal is to challenge and overturn the shield laws that protect providers in pro-choice states who mail abortion pills to patients in ban states. As part of that ongoing legal battle, Paxton is also suing Bruck for following New York’s shield law and refusing—twice!—to file Paxton’s summons ordering Carpenter to appear in a Texas court.

Texas Monthly gives a close-up look at Bruck and his experience being thrust into one of the most contentious political fights in U.S. history. (One legal expert compared the simmering tensions, invocations of extradition law, and massive disparities in states’ interpretations of human rights to the era of slavery.)

Yet when Bruck took office, his sole aspiration was to “[digitize] the county’s historical records and modernizing the local department of motor vehicles.” He says, “Next thing you know, we’re being sued by Texas.”

Bruck makes clear that rejecting Paxton’s requests wasn’t an ideological move; he’s simply adhering to New York’s shield law. As for Paxton’s claims that the county clerk is a “New York liberal intent on ending the lives of as many unborn children as they can,” Bruck… disagrees!

The notion that he is trying “to kill babies as fast as possible” is “really insane,” the father of a toddler daughter said. And now, at a time of rising political violence—anti-abortion violence, in particular—Paxton’s extreme language has put the young father in fear for his family’s safety:

“I have a three-month-old daughter at home. They’re putting a bull’s-eye on me personally for making this decision, when I was following New York state law.”

It’s a nightmare scenario, but Bruck’s courage shows how every small act of integrity adds up—and how ordinary people are keeping democracy alive.

Strategy Watch

Don’t miss this New York Times article about how Alliance Defending Freedom—the conservative legal powerhouse responsible for the end of Roe—is exporting their nonsense to the U.K.

Whether or not you’re interested in British politics, there’s a ton in there about the way ADF operates, just how powerful they are, and the way that they weaponize other, more popular, issues to restrict abortion. Namely, free speech.

AED has been banging the drum about this for years: we’ve tracked how ADF and groups like it are increasingly bringing lawsuits to end abortion clinic buffer zones, for example, claiming anti-abortion activists have a First Amendment right to harass patients and providers up close and personal. They’ve also used free speech cases to stop pro-choice states from regulating crisis pregnancy centers, and to fight for pharmacists’ right to deny women birth control prescriptions.

It’s a growing tactic that works well with younger conservatives—men, especially. It’s easier for them to say they’re protecting free speech than admit they want to roll back women’s rights. That’s why it’s no surprise, as the Times notes, that ADF is working to raise its profile on college campuses and on certain social media platforms. (Yikes.)

We’ll have more on ADF and their ‘free speech’ tactic soon, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

Ballot Box

Republican candidates have become increasingly predictable since Dobbs: they don’t want to talk about abortion—just quietly ban it while facing zero electoral consequences. Case in point: With a crucial election just weeks away, Virginia Republicans are scrubbing anti-abortion positions from their campaign websites.

The Virginia Independent reports that at least five GOP members of the state’s House of Delegates have “toned down or deleted anti-abortion language.” That includes candidates who voted against a bill to codify a right to contraception, and those who boasted about their commitments to “life” in 2023—language that’s now noticeably absent from their current websites.

The takeaway is simple: The right to abortion is popular; forced pregnancy and abortion bans are not. Republicans know that—possibly better than any of us.

Virginia’s November election will decide which party holds a narrow majority in the legislature, and what happens to the effort to codify abortion rights in the state Constitution. (There’s a reason anti-abortion organizations are going all in on the state!)

Virginia also has a competitive gubernatorial race between Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the current Lieutenant Governor who’s argued consent to sex is consent to pregnancy.

In a debate last week, Earle-Sears maintained her support for an abortion ban at 15 weeks or earlier—yet somehow characterized Spanberger as the radical one: “My opponent…has the extremist view, which is abortion up until the very hour that the baby could be born.”

Feel free to disregard anyone who uses language like this until the end of time.

Spanberger aptly responded by supporting the pro-choice ballot measure being pushed by Democrats, and noting:

“When the Dobbs decision was made, it was very quickly clear that state after state would move to restrict abortion access. In states where they further restricted abortion access, women have died.”

And that’s the rub. Earle-Sears wants voters to believe she’s the one with a moderate position and all we need is a little ‘consensus’ on the issue. Try telling that to a patient who is bleeding out at 16 weeks pregnant, one week too late to get the care they need in Earle-Sears’ Virginia.

In better news, Reproductive Freedom for All (RFA) just announced the launch of “Your Vote, Your Freedom”—a $5 million campaign to get voters to the polls and hold anti-abortion extremists accountable in key states.

The group says they’ll be working in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey,” where reproductive freedom and health care access hang in the balance,” and in California, “where voters are fighting for democracy.”

From RFA president Mini Timmaraju:

“When Americans vote, abortion wins. The majority of Americans, no matter their political party, support access to abortion.”

And it’s true! Remember, 81% of Americans don’t want abortion legislated by the government at all.