Anna Nusslock, was 15 weeks pregnant with twins when she arrived on February 23, 2023, at the Providence Saint Joseph Hospital after her water broke. She was in pain and severely bleeding. Her doctors diagnosed her with Previable Premature Prelabor Rupture of Membranes and confirmed her twins would not survive. Being that her pregnancy was no longer viable, Nusslock was informed that she would need an abortion to prevent serious health risks or death, but Saint Joe’s would not be able to perform it.
The Saint Joseph Hospital has served Humboldt County since 1922. Due to Saint Joe’s affiliation with the Catholic church, the hospital had a policy that prohibited them from performing an abortion as one of the fetuses still had a heartbeat. They recommended that Nusslock go to a different hospital, leaving her with the option of getting airlifted to the Bay Area or driving to the Mad River Hospital nearby. Nusslock decided to make the drive to the Mad River Hospital, with her doctors at Saint Joe’s giving her a bucket and towels for her car ride over. She made it to Mad River and received the care she needed.
In the past few years, our country has gone through many political and fundamental changes, with one of the biggest being the overturning of Roe V. Wade and the disappearance of the Federal protection of Abortions. When Roe V. Wade was overturned in 2022, it allowed a state-by-state determination of whether or not abortions should be legalized, a decision that has roused fear in women across the country. Here in California, we have watched as other states have enforced restrictions on abortion, while our reproductive rights have stayed protected. However, after Nusslock’s experience, the California public has seen that our reproductive rights might not be as protected as we had believed, causing outrage and creating an outcry for justice for her and other women in our country experiencing unjust reproductive care.
Months after this happened California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against Saint Joe’s on September 30, 2024, stating that the hospital violated multiple California laws due to its refusal to provide emergency abortion care. After this happened, the case became more public. Community members were outraged and fearful of what this means for the future of reproductive care in our area.
“It is upsetting and scary because you go to a hospital thinking that they will support you and take care of you, but then they deny your rights,” Malia Wolven, the Social Media Director of the Arcata High School Women’s Advocacy Club, said.
To make matters worse, in October of this year, the Mad River Hospital Labor and Delivery services were suspended, making Saint Joe’s the only hospital in the area available for emergencies regarding labor and delivery. This places even more severe limits on our already scarce access to healthcare. Now, a hospital that has recently failed to protect one of our community members is our only option for reproductive care.
“It made me really mad that a right protecting Californians could be denied based on a religious opinion, especially in Humboldt where we have very little healthcare. Saint Joe’s is one of the only options for women, so besides that, there is nowhere else for us to go, so I don’t really know what that means for Humboldt abortion rights,” Dylan Dickerson, a local teen activist said when sharing her personal feelings on the case.
Though the recent lawsuit seems to be the first major recognition of the way Saint Joe’s Religious policies have affected reproductive care in the area, that does not mean it is necessarily a new occurrence.
“Saint Joe’s historically has not allowed people to have their tubes tied for sterilization during a cesarean section for example, and so those people may end up having pregnancies later that can be more complicated because of multiple c-sections,” an anonymous local medical professional shared.
Saint Joe’s has announced a change to their policy as of October 28 with an agreement to comply with the California emergency services law. This requires all hospitals to provide abortions if not doing so would put the patient at risk. Hopefully, this change should stop another community member from going through the same experience Nusslock had, but it is not enough to fully ease the community’s worries.
The anonymous local medical professional is “cautiously hopeful that there might be some positive change that comes from that case.”
