ProPublica is right about Emily Waldorf.
Scroll to the end of this article to listen most of the information in video form.
We don’t trust ProPublica.
Over the last couple years, Secular Pro-Life has done a lot of work dissecting media stories about women who didn’t receive appropriate medical care in states with abortion restrictions. We call these the “denial of care” stories. Many of them were published by ProPublica. Often the stories include the following themes:
- a pregnant woman is denied appropriate medical care and is harmed or even dies
- the medical team involved doesn’t mention the abortion laws or suggest their choices are based on fear of abortion laws
- the journalists don’t quote or link to the actual text of the abortion laws, including the text about medical exemptions
- fear of abortion laws doesn’t explain many of the medical teams’ choices (e.g. administering abortion pills instead of doing a D&C, failing to notice retained products of conception after a D&C, discharging a woman with ongoing signs of sepsis, etc)
- the journalists fail to disclose that the medical experts they quote are major abortion-rights advocates
But they’re not wrong about everything.
These themes are frequent enough that I start opening the articles simply looking for the same signs of false framing, and it gets difficult to read the articles with an open mind. But it’s important that we try to seek truth, rather than seeking only ways to defend our side. If our side is correct, finding truth and defending it should be the same process anyway.
All that to say: ProPublica’s article about Emily Waldorf (“She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help.“) reads differently to me. Specifically, Waldorf’s hospital repeatedly, explicitly states that they are making their choices based on their interpretation of Arkansas abortion law, and their choices can hardly be explained otherwise.
That’s not to say the hospital is justified in its interepretation of the law – it manifestly is not – but this isn’t simply a case of pro-abortion media trying to twist facts to suit a narrative. The Arkansas hospital (Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville) denied very necessary medical care to this woman based on their understanding of the abortion law.
Here’s a quick summary of the Waldorf case.
Emily Waldorf was 17 weeks pregnant when her cervix dilated and the amniotic sac, as well as her daughter’s foot, were funneling into her cervix. Waldorf’s situation put her at increased risk of infection, but Washington Regional would not induce labor.
Waldorf was in the hospital for 4 days and then her water broke (basically eliminating any chance her daughter would make it to the outer edge of viablity, still several weeks away). This situation is known as PPROM (Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes), and both standard medical care and reasonable medical judgment support inducing labor in Waldorf’s situation. Washington Regional still wouldn’t.
Waldorf’s family had an attorney contact the hospital and give evidence that labor induction is standard medical care and within the understood exceptions of Arkansas abortion law. Washington Regional still wouldn’t do it. They said “We cannot rule out the possibility of an overzealous prosecutor.”
On the fifth day Waldorf had to take an hours-long ambulance ride to Kansas to be induced there instead, and she lost a liter of blood in the process. Adding insult to (literal) injury, Washington Regional refused to cover the $5,000 ambulance cost, claiming their hospital hadn’t believed the transfer was necessary and only did it because Waldorf specifically requested it.
There’s no excuse for the Arkansas hospital’s stance.
Here’s were I aree most with ProPublica article (emphasis added):
Many hospitals and doctors remain paralyzed, experts say, even though none have been prosecuted for treating a miscarriage with a procedure that would be considered an abortion.
“It’s been five years, and people are still like: ‘I don’t know what we can do,’” said Ghazaleh Moayedi, a doctor in Texas who never stopped providing abortions for women facing miscarriages. “That’s willful ignorance at this point.”
ProPublica doesn’t mention it, but Moayedi is an abortion provider and Fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health. In this instance I think highlighting Moayedi’s pro-choice creds would have reinforced ProPublica’s point: even staunch abortion advocates are saying the refusal to provide miscarriage care is willful ignorance, not a reasonable fear of anti-abortion laws.
You know who else thinks PPROM justifies legal medical intervention? The Arkansas bill’s lead sponsor, Mary Bentley. ProPublica references her saying so, and further saying doctors don’t need to wait for signs of infection to intervene. ProPublica also acknowledges major pro-life organizations like Americans United for Life agree: PPROM warrants medical interventions. And ProPublica notes that in the last multiple years since pro-life laws have gone into effect, no doctors – in Arkansas or anywhere in the nation – have been prosecuted for terminating pregnancies as part of medically necessary miscarriage care.
In other words, no one wants hospitals treating pregnant women this way. Pro-lifers, pro-choicers, doctors, patients, sponsors of these bills – none of them think this is appropriate or necessary, as evidenced by the unequivocal trend of not one single prosecution across the entire country for miscarriage management.
(Bizarrely, ProPublica notes that this kind of hypercautious response has happened even in pro-choice states. They talk about the case of Mylissa Farmer, who also had PPROM at 17 weeks in Kansas, where elective abortion is legal through 22 weeks. Farmer could have legally electively aborted her 17-week child, yet couldn’t get labor induction for PPROM at the same gestational age. This is because officials had deemed the political climate “too hot and heated” to help Farmer. This is lunacy.)
There’s no rational justification for Washington Regional’s thought-terminating level of caution regarding Arkansas abortion law.
The state of Arkansas needs to deal with this.
ProPublica reviews steps other states have taken to incentivize overcautious hospitals to do their jobs. When Ohio still had a 6 week abortion restriction, a group of hospitals got together and proactively decided what their collective policies would be regarding miscarriage, including agreeing that PPROM qualified as a medical emergency.
(ProPublica doesn’t mention that Ohio’s codes already explicitly listed premature rupture of membranes as a medical exception to abortion laws. Unclear why hospitals would need a “safety in numbers” approach to interpreting the law according to it’s explicit, plain meaning. But anyway.)
ProPublica also cited Texas’ work to push hospitals to get it together. In 2025 Texas passed the Life of the Mother Act, emphasizing doctors don’t need to wait until a woman “is at death’s door” and physician’s can safely rely on reasonable medical judgement. The Act also explained that doctors can seek legal advice about abortion laws and doing so doesn’t constitute “aiding and abetting” abortion.
Maybe more importantly, the Act required the Texas Medical Board to develop continuing medical education, and required obstetricians in Texas to receive continuing medical education, regarding the state’s abortion laws and exceptions.
Separate from the Life of the Mother Act, Texas also sanctioned some of the doctors who had negligently allowed women to die. Sanctions aren’t nearly enough – I would like to see more people fired – but at least they signal just how much Texas law does not allow or require this lethal incompetence.
Hospitals shouldn’t be free to treat patients horrifically based on their absurd interpretation of the laws. And if they do, medical boards and state legislatures have both ability and responsibility to react. In the case of Emily Waldorf and Washington Regional, Arkansas needs to step up.
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