Woman files complaint regarding Oklahoma’s abortion bans

The state is accused of violating federal law.
Jaci Statton and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed an administrative complaint on Sept. 19 against the University of Oklahoma Medical Center and Oklahoma Children’s Hospital for failing to provide her with a life-saving abortion earlier this year. Her complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alleges that OU Health’s denial of a medically necessary abortion violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, a federal law that prohibits hospitals from refusing to examine or treat patients with medical emergencies.
As recounted in her complaint, Statton became pregnant in early 2023. In February, she began experiencing abdominal pain, nausea, dizziness and excessive bleeding. After two visits to the emergency room, her OB/GYN diagnosed Statton with a partial molar pregnancy. Partial molar pregnancies occur when a single egg is fertilized by two sperm, creating an embryo with too much genetic material to develop into a viable pregnancy. These pregnancies cause cysts to grow inside the uterus and fluid-filled sacs to develop in the placenta which can burst, cause excessive bleeding and lead to sepsis, uterine infection, preeclampsia or shock from blood loss. Unless terminated beforehand, partial molar pregnancies usually end in early miscarriages.
After her diagnosis, Statton arrived at OU Medical Center, where doctors recommended she receive an abortion. However, because her providers could detect cardiac activity on her ultrasound, they refused to administer an abortion. According to Statton’s complaint, she was told by her doctors to “sit in the parking lot” and wait for her condition to worsen: “[W]e cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack.”
Eventually one of Statton’s doctors recommended that she travel out of state to receive a life-saving abortion. She and her family traveled 200 miles to Wichita, Kansas, the nearest location where Statton could receive appropriate medical care. Following her abortion, she elected to undergo tubal ligation because “it is too risky to become pregnant again in Oklahoma.”
While Statton received treatment for her partial molar pregnancy, she has yet to make a full recovery. She continued to experience abdominal pain, fatigue, heat sensitivity and hormonal imbalance, as well as the emotional trauma associated with losing a pregnancy, almost dying and foreclosing the possibility of becoming pregnant in the future.
In a press release from her attorneys, Statton stated: “Oklahoma’s laws nearly killed me. Even though I had an extremely dangerous pregnancy and was repeatedly bleeding, I was told to wait in a hospital parking lot until I was near death in order to get the life-saving care I needed… It’s not safe to be pregnant in Oklahoma. With this complaint, I want to make sure that no one else has to suffer the way I did.” Statton’s complaint seeks to clarify that EMTALA preempts Oklahoma law and that Oklahoma hospitals are required to comply with it regardless of contrary state law.
Statton’s complaint comes amid recent changes to Oklahoma’s abortion laws. In March 2023, the Oklahoma Supreme Court rendered Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice v. Drummond and invalidated SB 612, a state-enforced total criminal prohibition on abortion unless an abortion was necessary to “save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency.” The Court held that this statute violated the Due Process Clause and the Inherent Rights Clause of the Oklahoma Constitution.
Using the so-called “history and tradition standard” announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the decision that revoked the federal right to pre-viability abortion, the Oklahoma Supreme Court found that while Oklahoma has a long history of abortion criminalization, the criminalization statutes codified at statehood provided exemptions if an abortion was necessary to preserve a patient’s life, not just to save a patient’s life.
Accordingly, the Oklahoma Supreme Court recognized a state constitutional right to abortion when “if at any point in the pregnancy, the woman’s physician has determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty or probability that the continuation of the pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life due to the pregnancy itself or due to a medical condition that the woman is either currently suffering from or likely to suffer from during the pregnancy.”
Further, in May 2023, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice v. Oklahoma and struck down Oklahoma’s two civilian-enforced abortion bans. SB 1503 had permitted “[a]ny person” to bring civil lawsuits against anyone who performed an abortion, aided or abetted the performance of an abortion or intended to aid and abet the performance of an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and seek a minimum of $10,000 in damages. The statute only offered exemptions for “medical emergenc[ies],” but did not define medical emergency and placed the burden of proof on physicians to prove in court that the abortions they performed treated medical emergencies.
Similarly, HB 4327 had permitted “[a]ny person” to bring civil lawsuits against anyone who performed an abortion, aided or abetted the performance of an abortion or intended to aid and abet the performance of an abortion at any stage of pregnancy and seek a minimum of $10,000 in damages. This statute offered exemptions if an abortion was “necessary to save the life” of the patient or if the pregnancy resulted from sexual assault. It defined a medical emergency as “a condition in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” Again, the burden of proof was placed on physicians to prove in court that the abortions they performed treated medical emergencies.
In this decision, the Oklahoma Supreme Court found both SB 1503 and HB 4327 unconstitutional under the state constitution. It cited its decision from March and explained that the exemptions under these statutes were far too restrictive as, in the words of Justice Yvonne Kauger, the Oklahoma Constitution does not require a physician to “wait until their patient has a seizure, a stroke, experiences multiple organ failure, goes septic or goes into a coma because of the fear of criminal prosecution.”
While the Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled the Oklahoma Constitution protects the right to abortion when necessary to preserve a patient’s life, it has not yet decided whether the Oklahoma Constitution protects a right to elective, non-therapeutic abortion. Oklahoma’s 1910 abortion ban, which offers exemptions if an abortion is necessary to preserve a patient’s life, remains in effect.