Idaho woman shares 19-day miscarriage on TikTok, says state's abortion laws prevented her from getting care

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Idaho woman shares 19-day miscarriage on TikTok, says state's abortion laws prevented her from getting care

Carmen Broesder, 35, from Nampa, Idaho, shared her 19-day long miscarriage on TikTok after she said she was denied care due to Idaho's new abortion ban.

abcnews.go.com

Carmen Broesder, 35, said she visited the ER three times before receiving care.
By Mary Kekatos
Video by Jessie DiMartino
January 21, 2023, 1:04 PM

An Idaho woman who documented her 19-day miscarriage on social media said it was days before she could receive care due to the state's strict abortion laws.

Carmen Broesder, 35, from Nampa -- 20 miles west of Boise -- a mother-of-one was just six weeks pregnant when she began miscarrying on Dec. 8. However, she said it took eight days before she was given any medicine to manage her pain and to expel embryonic tissue, and several more days for the miscarriage to end.

In a series of TikTok videos -- along with medical records, photos and videos shared with ABC News -- she said that despite bleeding heavily and suffering intense cramps, she was denied a dilation and curettage, or D&C, which removes tissue from inside the uterus, multiple times.

Because a D&C can also be used when providing abortion care, she told ABC News she believes it's directly tied to Idaho's abortion ban.

"Why should I get to death's door to get help?" Broesder said. "I am prepared to be a mother. I am a mother and I wanted to have another baby. That is my story and it almost killed me."

Carmen Broesder, 35, from Nampa, Idaho, with her daughter, Lucy, in an undated photo.
Carmen Broesder

Different than other miscarriages​

After Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court last summer, Idaho passed a strict near-total abortion ban in August 2022 with only exceptions for rape, incest or if a pregnant person's life is in danger.

Broesder said she wasn't seeking an abortion when she went to the hospital the first time. She said she and her boyfriend had been trying to have a second child after the birth of her 16-month-old daughter, Lucy.

While trying to conceive, Broesder said she suffered other miscarriages, but she never experienced as much bleeding or as much pain as she did when she woke up on Thursday, Dec. 8.

"That was the most horrifying moment; I woke up and I had intense stomach pain," she said. "I couldn't stand up too much, and I go to the bathroom, and I was just bleeding. It was a horrific amount of blood loss where I instantly know this is not okay."

After the bleeding wouldn't stop with a 12-hour menstrual disc or with a super plus tampon, Broesder went to a local hospital. Broesder said she told staff she thought she was experiencing a miscarriage and after they checked her in, she said she waited for hours for someone to examine her.


She said staff eventually performed an ultrasound and confirmed there was no detectable heartbeat but, because she had an OBGYN appointment on Monday, Dec. 12, they advised her to attend as scheduled.

During the OBGYN appointment, Broesder said an ultrasound technician also confirmed the lack of a heartbeat and told her to come back for a follow-up in two days. ABC News reached out to the doctor's office for a comment on their care for Broesder but did not hear back.

'I'm going to die before someone helps me'​

Broesder said she felt like something still wasn't right with this miscarriage. She was still bleeding heavily and in pain but did not receive any medication.

"I'm feeling like no one's listening at this point," she said. "These people are supposed to help. So, I went home and kind of just suffered through."

Carmen Broesder, 35, from Nampa, Idaho, in an undated photo. Broesder said after two unsuccessful ER visits, she finally received care after visiting a hospital in Boise.
Courtesy Carmen Broesder

Broesder said she felt like something still wasn't right with this miscarriage. She was still bleeding heavily and in pain but did not receive any medication either from the ER or her OBGYN.

However, the pain and the bleeding became so bad that Broesder went to the ER the next day, where she said she again waited for hours for someone to see her -- and where she made her first TikTok video about her miscarriage, which went viral.

"I've been actively miscarrying since the 8th," she said in the video, posted on Dec. 13. "I have gone to a doctor, and this is my second visit to the ER if you're wondering why women's rights matter. I'm just going to [expletive] bleed out on this table before somebody comes and actually helps me."

She said that she asked twice for a D&C, including from her own OBGYN.

OBGYNs told ABC News the "save the mother's life" exception of abortions bans -- which Broesder may have qualified for in Idaho -- is often vague and the language is unclear about what qualifies as a mother's life being in danger, what the risk of death is, and how imminent death must be before a provider can act.


Providers also may be worried about providing miscarriage care because it could be misconstrued as providing abortion care, and they could face legal repercussions.

"That's the optimal scenario, that doctors are able to provide the care that's necessary and evidence-based," Dr. Beverly Gray, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in Broesder's care, told ABC News. "I worry about other systems that are worried about how they could come under attack for taking care of a patient or could a doctor that's caring for the patient be prosecuted in some way. I think these are real fears that people are facing."

Broesder was told by the second hospital that she had a complete miscarriage and was given tranexamic acid, medicine that controls bleeding and helps prevent excessive blood loss, according to medical records reviewed by ABC News, and sent home.

The hospital network, answering on behalf of both hospitals Broesder visited, said that "due to federal and state privacy laws, we cannot confirm nor deny that this patient was seen at our facilities" but that it "provides such medical care as required under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act" when a pregnant woman suffers a medical emergency that requires the pregnancy to be terminated.

During this time, Broesder said she thought she was going to die.

"I was in so much pain I didn't know how much more my body could take," she said. "I had gone to the ER twice and I got turned away. I go to the OB, and I got turned away. I knew I couldn't afford much more visits for longevity afterwards to keep my family afloat. So, I was just like, well, it is what it is."

Finally receiving care​

By this time, her very first TikTok video had gone viral – the app shows it currently has more than 620,000 views - and she had been making more videos to keep those following her story updated.

She said many of her new followers told her to go to the ER again and, on Dec. 16, she decided to drive to St. Luke's Boise Medical Center, where she was given a room and seen by a nurse.

Broesder said she requested a D&C and was denied again.

Dr. Frank Johnson, chief medical officer at St. Luke's Health System covering Boise, Elmore and McCall, who did not treat Broesder but spoke about her case with ABC News, said "looking over this particular situation, there was no additional need for an interventional procedure by the time that she arrived here at St. Luke's."

In this screen grab taken from Google Maps Street View, the St. Lukes Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, is shown.
Google Maps Street View

 

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So, I think in this particular case, medically appropriate care was provided to the patient," he added.

While D&Cs are generally performed to terminate a pregnancy in the later stages, Dr. Saida Haider, an OBGYN at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told ABC News it can be provided if a patient is bleeding heavily in early pregnancy and miscarrying.

"D&Cs can be performed at any point in pregnancy, including early pregnancy and in the case of a miscarriage if someone is bleeding heavily," she said, commenting in a general sense and not on Broesder's care specifically. "What I will say, as a clinician, miscarriage is a very common occurrence in pregnancy and for patients that are clinically 'less stable,' which is what we call them when they're bleeding a lot, the best course of action is a D&C and that is what you use to treat an early pregnancy in this situation."

In an audio recording of the conversation Broesder had with the physician about why she couldn't get a D&C, he said "there is some trepidation" about performing one in the wake of Idaho's new abortion law.

"I felt like 50 pounds of bricks got lifted off my shoulders and got replaced with like 50 pounds of raging fire," she said. "But I couldn't do anything because this guy's helping me so I'm not mad at him and it's not his fault. I'm obviously mad at the law."

Johnson did say, at St. Luke's, doctors do sometimes have to consult with the legal team on cases to make sure they're staying within the bounds of the law, although it's not clear if this occurred in Broesder's case.

"That's been a new situation, really a necessity based on the ways that the laws are currently devised and written," he said. "Traditionally, I think it is best when those conversations can occur between a physician, a woman and her family, and having to add the complexity of needing to figure out how to navigate a new law is an added challenge."

Haider, who was not involved in Broesder's care, said the fear of criminalization and inability to provide care, even in situations where abortion providers might deem it necessary, might prevent them from acting.

"They might have initially acted sooner, they might have acted more aggressively to provide, taken more actions to intervene if they could have and by delaying that care, you're putting the patients in a worse situation clinically and more at risk of bad outcome," she told ABC News, speaking in a general sense.

Broesder said the doctor at St. Luke's did discover part of the embryo was stuck in her cervix, so she received a procedure to remove part of the remaining tissue and was prescribed misoprostol, which treats postpartum bleeding, induces labor and causes an abortion.

From the day Broesder's miscarriage started to when it ended, she said it was a total of 19 days of bleeding.

Carmen Broesder, 35, from Nampa, Idaho, in an undated photo.
Carmen Broesder

She said while she has been encouraged by the supportive comments and messages she has received on social media since her first video, she does not intend to try for another baby. She said the Idaho law worries her that if something similar happens, she could die due to fear from medical professionals about administering care.

"After this, even without the possibility or desire to have a baby, like, why would I want to go through that pain again?" Broesder said. "And why would I want to go through my daughter almost losing her mom again to have another child? That seems selfish and wrong."

She added, "I did not deserve to have to beg for my life for eight days and nobody else does either."

 

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https://www.tiktok.com/@geekynerdbytch/video/7176785510982176046?lang=en

 

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https://archive.is/xtAIl

 

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Idaho doctor who worked at closed maternity ward says abortion ban harmed recruiting • Colorado Newsline

A hospital in a rural area outside of Idaho’s capital city of Boise closed its labor and delivery and neonatal intensive care units April 1, citing declining birth rates and staffing issues. West Valley Medical Center is the third facility to close its maternity services in Idaho since the state...

coloradonewsline.com

• ABORTION POLICY
• HEALTH

Idaho doctor who worked at closed maternity ward says abortion ban harmed recruiting​

BY: KELCIE MOSELEY-MORRIS - APRIL 21, 2024 4:00 AM


West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, Idaho, closed its labor and delivery unit on April 1 for financial and staffing reasons. A former OBGYN who worked at West Valley for decades said the state’s abortion laws made it difficult to fill vacant OB positions. (Kelcie Moseley-Morris/States Newsroom)

A hospital in a rural area outside of Idaho’s capital city of Boise closed its labor and delivery and neonatal intensive care units April 1, citing declining birth rates and staffing issues.

West Valley Medical Center is the third facility to close its maternity services in Idaho since the state enacted a near-total abortion ban in August 2022. The county where the medical center is located had more than 3,300 births in 2022, and West Valley sees about 45,000 outpatient visitors in a year. The entire medical center has 112 beds.

The law subjects physicians to two to five years in prison, fines and the loss of their medical license for providing an abortion, even in emergency situations, at least until the U.S. Supreme Court makes a definitive ruling on the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act’s application in Idaho. Oral arguments in that case will take place April 24.

A February report by a coalition of Idaho physicians found the state lost 22% of practicing OB-GYNs since the ban took effect, and 55% of maternal-fetal medicine specialists. The first closure happened in Sandpoint, at Bonner General Hospital in March 2023. The hospital cited the political climate along with staffing issues in its announcement as the reason for closure.

West Valley did not specifically call out the abortion ban or other politics as a reason for closure, but Dr. Ted Colwell, who worked there full time for many years and as a retiree until the April 1 closure, told States Newsroom he thinks it was a factor. Colwell describes himself as “pro-life,” but he is concerned about the state of medical care in Idaho.

His responses to questions have been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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States Newsroom: What’s your experience with West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell?

Dr. Ted Colwell: I moved here from a residency training and started practicing in 1982 at what was then called the Caldwell Women’s Clinic, which started in 1969. I was the fourth physician in the group, and I’ve been basically in that practice for 36 years, though it has gone through different names and changes of staff. West Valley was always owned by HCA Healthcare, and we had a general OB practice. Someone asked me how many deliveries I’ve done over the years, and it’s around 7,000.

Dr. Ted Colwell (Courtesy of Ted Colwell)

SN: When did you retire?

Colwell: I retired in 2016. Because our group is accredited by the American Institute of Ultrasound Medicine, they needed someone to take on the role of reading ultrasounds for the clinic, so I’ve been doing that since I retired but that’s mostly from home.

SN: What was it like when you were told about the closure?

Colwell: I knew we were struggling, but when the announcement came, I was shocked. Caldwell is kind of a funny hospital in a sense that it’s kind of rural, but we had excellent maternity services and neonatal intensive care there. The hospital serves not only Caldwell, but a lot of the surrounding areas, so it’s not a small rural hospital, it’s a small regional hospital. St. Lukes and Saint Alphonsus (the two major hospital systems in the state) have spread their hospitals west at the same time, so in a way West Valley became surrounded, but that being said, we still have a very loyal patient population. I’m just sorry that something couldn’t be done to keep the services going at West Valley. I think they tried everything they could.

SN: What do you know about the staffing issues that led in part to the closure?

Colwell: I’ve been sort of involved with some of the recruitment efforts and interviewing of some of the potential candidates. Last year, we had five potential candidates, and due to various situations, all five decided to go elsewhere. Idaho used to be a state that attracted OBs for the outdoors, for the family values, the recreation — it’s a good place to live. But I think the overturn of Roe v. Wade had an impact, even though Idaho wasn’t known for large numbers of abortions. I know abortions happened here, and some physicians provided them, but the vast majority of the physicians I knew over the years did not do elective terminations. It didn’t really become an issue for me until this whole issue with the hospital came to a head.

People are going to suffer under this law, and it makes me mad that politicians get in the way of evidence-based medicine. I think they should not make it a criminal offense to take good care of women who need medical care and treatment.

– Dr. Ted Colwell

What I heard from others was that those who were interviewed in the last year expressed concerns regarding the legal climate and concerns of prosecution, which led them to not take our offer of employment. These concerns were from those that were relatively fresh out of training. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t care about that, and would do the right thing for the patient regardless. I guess that comes with 40-plus years of experience.

SN: Why do you think closing the labor and delivery unit is cause for concern?

Colwell: I feel that women and mothers bring families to the hospital, children and husbands, and when you lose that, there’s a risk of losing a lot of services at the hospital. People will be starting to drift off to other facilities further away to get their care. And when you come to the emergency room, if you’ve got a condition where it’s gynecological and there’s no one in the hospital who can take care of it, to me it puts the hospital in a bad situation. If a patient halfway through their pregnancy is told, “You’re going to have to find somebody else,” first of all, can they find somebody else? And two, can the other clinics who are still active absorb these patients? It’s going to put stress on the whole system.

SN: You described yourself as “pro-life.” Tell me what the difference is for you when it comes to this kind of medical care.

Colwell: There comes a time when you have to make a medical decision for the life of the mother. It’s taking care of patients. People are going to suffer under this law, and it makes me mad that politicians get in the way of evidence-based medicine. I think they should not make it a criminal offense to take good care of women who need medical care and treatment.

SN: What else do you want to add about the current landscape of maternity care in Idaho?

Colwell: I wish the legislators that push these laws through would think about the consequences of their actions. I think they kind of shoot from the hip, is my feeling, and they’re trying to make a statement, and I have not seen a real push (from organizations) to educate the legislators as to what the heck they’re doing. Why don’t you consult with the people that are involved? I mean, my gosh.

I hope West Valley can survive this. And it probably will. But it’s going to affect a lot of people in the meantime.

 

[Elim Garak]

That's fukked up, but not surprising.

 

[Ohnoits]

https://archive.is/xtAIl

Man if I lived in Idaho I'd be selling the house immediately and moving. I know it's tough out there, jobs, mortgage payments, but this is not worth the life of my wife.