Pregnant woman forced to have dangerous surgery after being misdiagnosed, lawsuit says
A woman’s pregnancy should’ve been terminated — because it directly threatened her life — but a crisis pregnancy center nurse failed to diagnose it as unviable, a recently filed lawsuit in Massachusetts said.
Crisis pregnancy centers are facilities that look like valid reproductive health clinics but ”use deceptive means,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which warns to avoid them. These centers intend to steer pregnant people away from choosing abortion and also seek to delay those procedures, the organization says.
After the woman’s ectopic pregnancy was misdiagnosed as viable at Clearway Clinic in Worcester, it ruptured — sending her into a dangerous, invasive surgery procedure to remove her fallopian tube and save her from internal bleeding, a complaint filed June 22 in Worcester County Superior Court says.
Ectopic pregnancies are those that form outside the uterus, where a fetus is meant to grow. Most ectopic pregnancies take place inside a fallopian tube and a fertilized egg there will not survive, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The woman, of Worcester, has filed a class-action lawsuit against Clearway Clinic, saying the clinic uses “deceptive advertising, as it does not make clear that its true goal is to dissuade women from terminating their pregnancies.” The clinic’s “failure to adhere to accepted standards of medical care, resulted in a missed diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy, which ended up rupturing and creating a life-threatening emergency,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit names the woman only as “Jane Doe,” permitted in a case that “involves reproductive matters,” the lawsuit says.
McClatchy News contacted Clearway Clinic, which also has a second facility in Springfield, for comment on June 29 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
Clearway Clinic CEO Jill Jorgensen declined to comment on the complaint’s accusations in a statement to MassLive.com, citing HIPAA laws.
However, she told the outlet the center “has served more than 10,000 women and their families in the Worcester area for the past 22 years at no cost and have never had a complaint like this in the past.”
The woman’s misdiagnosis
The plaintiff in the case learned of the ectopic pregnancy in November 2022, a month after she went to Clearway, attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who’s representing the plaintiff, said in a news release.
That month, a sudden, intense pain in her side alongside overwhelming fatigue and lightheadedness resulted in her husband calling 911, Liss-Riordan said.
The woman went to UMass Memorial Medical Center’s emergency department, where she learned her ectopic pregnancy ruptured and caused hemorrhaging — immediately warranting dangerous surgery to save her life, according to the release.
The woman had sought out an ultrasound provider online and discovered Clearway Clinic, the law firm said. She relied on the company’s declaration of being a state-licensed medical facility having board-certified doctors and nurses that can diagnose the viability of pregnancies, the release said.
According to the lawsuit, the company’s ultrasound statements are false, as those performed “do not meet the standard levels of medical care, which causes misdiagnosis, including in plaintiff’s case failing to identify an ectopic pregnancy.”
“At every step of the way (the plaintiff) was led to believe she was receiving appropriate medical care when in fact she was subject to a campaign of misinformation and unfair and deceptive practices,” Liss-Riordan said.
If the plaintiff received standard care, she would’ve learned the truth — that her pregnancy wasn’t viable, according to the complaint.
Clearway Clinic is accused of encouraging her pregnancy, despite it being a risk to her life, after it was misdiagnosed as viable.
More on crisis pregnancy centers
On Clearway Clinic’s website, it lists services including pre-abortion consultation, ultrasounds, pregnancy testing, abortion pill reversal, STI testing and treatment, prenatal health education and post-abortion care programs. It doesn’t provide abortion services.
This is one warning sign that a clinic is actually a crisis pregnancy center, according to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, because it claims to offer abortion consultation and education without actually providing abortions.
Crisis pregnancy centers do not “provide comprehensive reproductive healthcare,” the attorney general’s office warns, and most aren’t licensed to provide such care. Those without proper licenses aren’t bound to follow standard care or ethical practices.
The company’s Worcester and Springfield locations are listed among the crisis pregnancy centers and anti-abortion centers in New England by Reproductive Equity Now, a non-profit based in Boston.
Worcester is about 45 miles southwest of Boston.
This story was originally published June 30, 2023 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Pregnant woman forced to have dangerous surgery after being misdiagnosed, lawsuit says."
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