A woman is suing an Illinois hospital and OBGYN after allegedly being denied care for her ectopic pregnancy — a condition that can be life-threatening without quick treatment that involves terminating the pregnancy.
The case, filed on behalf of 28-year-old Harmonie Perrone, poses thorny questions about whether patients experiencing pregnancy complications are able to get timely, life-saving reproductive health care, even when it should be protected by state law. Perrone alleges that she was denied care because a doctor believed there was a “1 percent chance” she could have a healthy pregnancy, and that she was told a clinic she was referred to did not “do abortions.”
Perrone’s lawsuit says she lost her fallopian tube as a result of the delayed treatment, meaning she will have to rely on in vitro fertilization, an expensive and involved medical regimen, if she hopes to get pregnant again.
People living in states with abortion bans have said they struggled to receive appropriate care for ectopic pregnancies. But Illinois has some of the nation’s strongest abortion rights protections: Beyond protecting the right to abortion, Illinois law requires that hospitals provide abortions when they are the necessary care in a medical emergency — naming ectopic pregnancies specifically.
“Laws have to be enforced,” said Molly Duane, one of Perrone’s attorneys and the litigation director at Amplify Legal, a nonprofit legal advocacy practice focused on abortion and reproductive rights. “It’s one thing to say, ‘Our constitution, we have these statutory rights that protect people in reproductive emergencies. We even have a statute that explicitly calls ectopic pregnancy a medical emergency.’ But if no one is enforcing them, if no one is holding physicians to account, then bad behavior is possible.”
Ectopic pregnancies — which cannot result in healthy births — occur when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, typically in a fallopian tube. If it is not treated immediately, the pregnancy can continue to grow, ultimately putting such pressure on the tube that it bursts. At a minimum, the loss of a fallopian tube makes it impossible to become pregnant without fertility treatment. In the worst case, it can result in bleeding so severe that the patient dies.
In this case, filed Monday and shared first with The 19th, lawyers for Perrone allege that she was turned away by a doctor when seeking methotrexate, a drug that can treat ectopic pregnancies if they are detected early by halting the growth of the pregnancy and letting the body reabsorb it. If an ectopic pregnancy has grown beyond a certain level, medication is no longer sufficient to treat it, and doctors must instead perform surgery, which can result in the loss of a patient’s fertility.
While living in other states, Perrone previously had two other ectopic pregnancies, which put her at increased risk of developing another such pregnancy. She said she sought medical care at her local emergency room after experiencing bleeding and shoulder pain — symptoms that can be early signs of an ectopic pregnancy.
Perrone had learned she was pregnant only a few days earlier. She was hoping for a boy; she and her husband had started thinking about names. She has two other children, both born when she was a teenager and living with their father.
Over the past 10 years, Perrone has had three miscarriages in addition to her two previous ectopic pregnancies. Her first ectopic pregnancy required removal of one of her fallopian tubes; losing the second would mean she would not be able to get pregnant without in vitro fertilization.
An ultrasound on October 9, cited in her lawsuit, showed a mass had grown in her fallopian tube. According to her lawsuit, emergency room staff at the Barrington, Illinois-based Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital referred her to an OBGYN. On the morning of October 10, Perrone said, she and her husband went to the clinic hoping to receive methotrexate.
But the suit alleges that when Perrone arrived, the practicing OBGYN, Dr. Dympna Ann Coll, declined to provide treatment, citing a “1 percent chance” of a healthy pregnancy and saying that her clinic would not “do abortions.”
“I feel like I was more dazed than anything,” Perrone said in an interview. “It’s just like, ‘What, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, you’re really not going to help me?’”
Knowing about Illinois’ abortion rights protections only added to her shock, she said.
“I literally said out of my mouth, ‘Are abortions not legal here? Like, do I not have a right to an abortion?’” she said. “I was so shook. It was the craziest thing.”
Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital did not respond to a request for comment. Hillard Sterling, an attorney representing Coll, said that Coll could not comment citing another pending lawsuit. He said his team stands by the statements made in a defamation lawsuit Coll filed against Perrone.
“While we cannot comment on pending litigation, we look forward to presenting the facts in court as the case proceeds,” Sterling said.
Perrone went from that facility to another she said Coll had recommended; that health center was not a hospital, and staff told her they did not provide methotrexate, she said. She then went to the center’s affiliated hospital, according to her lawsuit; that facility also did not offer the drug or have an OBGYN available.
“Every minute counts in situations like that,” she said. “In that moment, when you start to think about, ‘Am I going to die from this,’ you really start to think about your whole life — like, oh my God, out of all the things that could take me out, this is what’s going to kill me.’
Only after driving for 30 more minutes to another facility did Perrone ultimately find a hospital and doctor that would provide her with methotrexate, according to the lawsuit.
Six days later, Perrone experienced renewed pain, according to her lawsuit. She returned to the hospital in Huntley, Illinois, where she had received methotrexate. There, she learned the drug had not successfully removed her ectopic pregnancy, which meant she would require surgery. During the surgery, her doctor discovered bleeding indicating that her fallopian tube had already ruptured. Perrone’s tube was removed.
Perrone is suing for damages to cover the cost of in vitro fertilization treatment — which she will now need if she hopes to get pregnant — as well as “compensation for the immense pain and suffering she endured when medical providers substituted their own values and priorities for her bodily autonomy.”
A year ago, a California woman sued a hospital chain in the state, saying she was denied timely treatment for a miscarriage. California state law, like in Illinois, explicitly protects abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. That case remains ongoing.
Perrone shared her experience through a series of videos posted last fall to TikTok. Though she did not name Coll in those videos, she did disclose the doctor’s name and practice in subsequent comments. Coll is now suing Perrone, alleging that those videos are defamatory.
In that suit, Coll says that she did not refuse to treat Perrone and that she in fact offered Perrone “definitive same-day surgery” to treat her ectopic pregnancy that Perrone declined.
Perrone said she was not offered any treatment at Coll’s clinic. Her medical records from her visit, included in her lawsuit, say that Coll offered her “laparoscopic surgery for possible ectopic,” which those same records also describe as “diagnostic.”
When a doctor is unsure of whether a patient has an ectopic pregnancy, they can offer a laparoscopic procedure as a way of confirming. Doctors use a tiny camera to look inside the uterus and fallopian tubes for an ectopic pregnancy. If they find one, the doctor can then remove it.
According to Perrone’s lawsuit, neither she nor her husband recall any such discussion of laparoscopic surgery.
She said she and her husband are weighing whether to pursue pregnancy through in vitro fertilization, the only option available since she no longer has fallopian tubes. But it’s a difficult decision, she said.
“I’m really scared to get shut down again, because I really — I thought I was going to die,” she said. “I don’t want to go through that again.”
