TEXAS – There came a point when the chills, fever, and cramps were so intense that Lynn Callaway thought she might die.
Callaway was having a miscarriage and had developed an infection. She wanted abortion-inducing medication or surgery to help empty her uterus and bring her suffering to an end. However, in a federal complaint filed Monday, Callaway states that she had already been refused that type of care at two Austin-area emergency rooms and felt she had no choice but to endure the ordeal alone at home.
Her husband, Mario, was unwilling to accept that his otherwise healthy 40-year-old wife was suddenly wan and bleeding on the floor while their young son watched in alarm. He wanted to take her to New Mexico or Colorado to get the care they felt they were wrongfully denied in Texas, but she was too weak to sustain the trip.
When they finally saw her doctor days later, Callaway was prescribed abortion-inducing drugs to pass the miscarriage. In an interview with The Texas Tribune, she recounted pressing her doctor on why it had taken three medical facilities four days to treat her, only to be told that the emergency room would “have to be damned sure that it’s an actual miscarriage to be offering the pill.”
Four years after Texas banned nearly all abortions, Callaway is among women stating they are still being denied the full range of miscarriage care by doctors fearful of being accused of performing a prohibited abortion, risking life imprisonment or losing their medical licenses.
Last year, lawmakers passed a bill aimed at reassuring doctors they wouldn’t be punished for treating miscarriages, which went into effect last June. However, in October, Callaway found herself facing the same fear and uncertainty that has restricted pregnancy care in Texas since 2022.
Callaway’s complaint alleges that Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in Round Rock and St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal statute requiring hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment, including for miscarriages. She also requested that the Texas Medical Board and Texas Board of Nursing investigate the healthcare providers she claims failed to treat her.
A spokesperson for Baylor Scott & White Health mentioned that while the hospital could not comment on specific cases, medical decisions are guided by the clinical judgment of their physicians and care teams, who determine appropriate treatment based on medical needs and applicable legal requirements.
St. David’s did not respond to a request for comment.
Callaway’s lawyers assert that EMTALA investigations are being delayed by the Trump administration, partly due to a 2022 lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Yet, it remains one of the few legal avenues available for women like Callaway who wish to challenge the impacts of the state’s abortion ban.
In the months following her miscarriage, Callaway has been diagnosed with PTSD and struggles to see pregnant women without envisioning the worst-case scenario.
“A lot of women don’t know — I didn’t — that it can go left really quickly,” she said. “And there are so many women where it did go left, and they’re not here to talk to us about this today.”
A hoped-for pregnancy interrupted
The Callaways have lived an adventurous life together. They met in ninth-grade literature class in Athens, Georgia, and began dating in college. They have lived in various places, including Michigan, New York City, and Portugal, and served together in AmeriCorps. Callaway works in marketing and has started her own mushroom soda business. They moved to Texas after their son was born eight years ago.
They had been wanting to expand their family and thought it might take time due to their age; however, almost as soon as they began trying, they received a positive pregnancy test. They were both thrilled and ready for another exciting chapter in their lives.
“I immediately called the OB/GYN to let them know and get on the books for my first prenatal visit,” Callaway said. “We had already started to tell my son. We were just really happy. We were so looking forward to bringing this baby into our lives.”
Before her first appointment, when Callaway estimated she was seven weeks pregnant, she began spotting and experiencing pain. At her OB/GYN’s office, a nurse practitioner suggested she might have an ectopic pregnancy, a nonviable and potentially life-threatening condition where a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, according to the complaint.
Callaway began panicking, grief over losing the pregnancy mixing with alarm over the potential consequences to her health. She had read about Kyleigh Thurman, an Austin-area woman who lost a fallopian tube after doctors delayed treating her ectopic pregnancy, in violation of federal law.
“I hadn’t heard of any good situations from this,” Callaway said. “It sounded like an emergency.”
The nurse ordered bloodwork to assess Callaway’s human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) levels. In early pregnancy, hCG, known as the “pregnancy hormone,” typically doubles every 48 to 72 hours. Declining numbers usually indicate a miscarriage.
Callaway was already home when she received the results — her hCG had dropped from 688 mIU/mL to 130 mIU/mL over the last 10 days, as per the complaint. By that time, she was bleeding more, the cramping was increasing, and she felt lethargic. She called the after-hours nurse, who informed her that her hCG was still too high to offer more significant intervention, like surgery or medication, according to the complaint.
It was a Friday night, so if her condition worsened, the nurse advised her to go to the emergency room, Callaway recounted.
“I was just totally confused,” Callaway said. “And then things took a turn for the worse.”
Hospital uncertainty
That night, with her husband and son in the car, a shaking, sick Callaway walked into the emergency room at Baylor Scott & White in Round Rock. She informed the nurse that she was in pain and bleeding and that based on her declining hCG levels, she was experiencing either a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy.
The emergency room physician asked her to consent to an STD test, she recalled.
“I don’t need an STD test; I’m having a miscarriage,” Callaway remembers thinking. But to expedite the process, she agreed to a painful pelvic exam.
The doctor confirmed that her pregnancy was not ectopic, but that she was miscarrying. With no fetal cardiac activity, Callaway expected to receive medications, likely misoprostol and mifepristone, which are standard procedures for treating early pregnancy loss. These abortion-inducing drugs help accelerate the body’s passage of fetal tissue to reduce the risk of infection, retained tissue, or other complications.
Instead, she claims she was sent home to wait for the pregnancy to pass. She was told it would feel like a bad period and that she could take Tylenol for the pain. The doctor informed her that everything with her blood work looked fine, according to the complaint. However, Callaway noted that her blood specimen was still in the room, not yet tested.
“So I’m not really believing it,” she said. “I don’t think there was any intention to address the issue. It was a passing the buck situation.”
Back at home, the chills and pain increased. She thought about the women who had died from delayed miscarriage care. Being a Black woman, she felt acutely aware of the disproportionate risk she faced. She began discussing with her husband what they would do if she didn’t survive, how he would raise their son, and how he could access the life insurance policy.
Mario was aghast. He had always thought he would be able to protect his wife against anything that came their way, but this was not a bear or a rattlesnake, he said.
“I just felt helpless in a way that I’ve never felt in this
