She faced a life-threatening miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ abortion ban, even calls to the governor’s office didn’t help.

On the morning of September 16, 2024, Emily Waldorf’s preschool child found her curled up on the bathroom floor. Waldorf had felt a strange pressure during a shower, like a balloon bulging in her vagina, and she was now bleeding. “I can be your pillow, Mommy,” her daughter said, nuzzling into her neck.

Waldorf was 17 weeks pregnant. She and her husband, Justin, dropped their daughter off at her grandparents’ house and rushed to Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Waldorf worked as an acute care physical therapist.

In a dark room, a doctor pointed to an hourglass shape that glowed on the ultrasound screen: there was her amniotic sac, pushing into her dilated cervix, and there was their daughter’s tiny foot, sticking out of it.

“Your body is about to miscarry,” the doctor said.

Three doctors got together and told the couple that the longer Waldorf’s cervix remained open and her uterus exposed to bacteria, the higher her risk of developing a life-threatening infection. The standard of care, they explained, would be to empty her uterus quickly.

But they couldn’t do that, a doctor apologized with a deep sigh. The baby still had a detectable heartbeat, and stopping it would run afoul of a national abortion ban that was put in place after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022; violations carried penalties of up to $100,000 in fines and 10 years in prison. They had to wait until Waldorf went into labor on her own or showed signs of a dangerous infection, or until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

“Our hands are tied behind our backs,” Dr. Erin Large later told him, according to a journal Waldorf began keeping on his phone and sharing with ProPublica. “Tell your friends to vote differently.”

Raised Baptist in a Republican family, Waldorf struggled to understand what doctors were saying as waves of grief hit her. How could a ban on abortion targeting women who want to end their pregnancies prevent doctors from helping a woman who does not want to?

Waldorf was not opposed to abortion, but she had never considered that the law might apply to her. His father was a doctor. It was the hospital where she had worked for six years. The OB-GYN team treating her had delivered her daughter, and some of them lived blocks from her parents. She was a highly educated 38-year-old woman with ties to the governor. As she lay in a hospital bed, worried that an infection could enter her uterus at any moment, she finally understood the ban now applied to anyone who loses a baby.

Trapped in medical limbo, she took the advice of a nurse friend and started writing everything down. This diary, along with her medical records and interviews, offer a rare and poignant account of how Arkansas’ abortion ban, not best practices or medical training, guided the choices of its doctors.

She was having a miscarriage as hospitals, doctors, lawmakers and medical boards across the country faced the reality that the bans, designed to be as strict and punitive as possible, were causing preventable harm and even deaths. Yet even as these cases increased, there was no coordination between states to protect women. Every state, every woman seemed to operate in isolation. And Waldorf would discover that she was alone in this.

One of the doctors advised Waldorf to go home and told her what to expect: at any moment she could start bleeding profusely and go into labor. This could happen while she was going to the bathroom or playing on the floor with her daughter.

When the baby began to emerge, the doctor said Waldorf shouldn’t pull too hard or she might rip his head off. She would have to cut the umbilical cord herself and return to the hospital for care in a diaper, her fetus wrapped in towels and the cord hanging between her legs.

Waldorf did not want her daughter, or herself, to have these memories in her home. So she begged to stay and the doctors agreed. No one could predict when this ordeal would end.

Waldorf settled into a small hospital room, her husband glued to the vinyl couch beside her, both reeling from the impending loss of what would have been their second daughter.

The pregnancy was far enough along that their 4-year-old daughter was starting to get excited about decorating a nursery, camping trips as a family of four, and what it would mean to become a big sister.

Now they had to engage in the morbid ritual of waiting for this dream to die. Doctors and nurses with Doppler and ultrasound machines kept appearing, forcing them to hear the heartbeat and see the movements of a small body. “Oh look,” Large said during one of the ultrasounds, “she opens and closes her mouth.”

“My body failed a baby,” Waldorf wrote in his journal.

Waldorf’s job caring for critical patients in the intensive care unit had taught him to compartmentalize and stay calm under pressure. But as the days passed, her determination turned to panic when she discovered an outcome she hadn’t expected.

Scrolling through social media on her third night, a headline caught her eye: “Abortion bans have delayed emergency medical care. In Georgia, experts say this mother’s death was preventable.”

The day Waldorf was admitted to the hospital, ProPublica published a investigation into the death of Amber Thurmana 28-year-old medical assistant who died of an infection after doctors delayed emptying her uterus. Thurman left behind a 6-year-old son.

“Oh my God, it’s not just me,” Waldorf thought. “But she’s dead.”

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Almost exactly three years before Waldorf showed up at Washington Regional in urgent need of care, a 28-year-old woman named Josseli Barnica arrived at the Houston emergency room with the same problem. She was also 17 weeks pregnant. The fetal head was pressed against her dilated cervix and a miscarriage was, according to her medical records, “inevitable.”

When her husband rushed from labor to her side, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: Inducing labor or emptying her uterus would be “a crime,” he later told ProPublica. “They had to wait until there was no more heartbeat.”

Texas, like Arkansas, has banned criminal abortion. If Barnica had landed in one of the hospitals around the world, from Nigeria to Mexico, that meet the standards of the World Health Organization and countless medical associations, his treatment would have been very different.

In these hospitals, when a patient’s cervix opens too early, signaling an “inevitable miscarriage,” or when her water breaks before the fetus can survive, called predictable premature rupture of membranes (abbreviated as “PPROM”), it is common for doctors to suggest emptying the uterus. This is true even if there is still a heartbeat, given the high risk of infection.

“It’s basic obstetrics,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Texas. “Everyone should know that abortion must be performed in these settings, otherwise women can die. »

For 40 hours, Barnica waited in the hospital for the heartbeat to stop, her cervix exposed to bacteria. She died three days after giving birthProPublica reported in October 2024; the cause was a fatal infection. The hospital declined to comment on Barnica’s case, but said “our responsibility is to follow applicable state and federal laws and regulations” and that doctors exercise their independent judgment. The doctors involved did not respond to requests for comment.

His death and those of six more women in three states over the next three years highlighted the consequences of the bans. Because legal exceptions to medical emergencies are vague and have rarely been tested in courts, hospital administrators, lawyers and doctors sometimes put legal concerns ahead of the well-being of their patientsthe ProPublica report found.

Texas lawmakers responded to ProPublica’s inquiries by change exceptions in their state laws to clarify that a life-threatening emergency did not need to be “imminent” for doctors to act. The state medical board clarified that doctors can empty the uterus of any patient with PPROMand it requires doctors to undergo training to make sure they know this.

But Texas’ reforms stopped at its borders. Without a single federal law governing abortion, none of the 19 other states with similar bans were neither required nor asked to follow suit. This includes Arkansas, which touts its designation as “Most pro-life state in America.”

Since the ban took effect, not one person has been able to receive a medically necessary abortion, according to public state data.

State Republican lawmakers and officials have repeatedly said rejected attempts to expand exceptions to the law. And when advocates tried to launch a ballot initiative to allow voters to weigh in, Republicans blocked it due to a paperwork error and created restrictions to make such initiatives harder to file.

The doctors and Democrats fighting for reform did it without the idiots essential births that could help them defend their cause. Although the two states share a border, news about Texas’ changes to its abortion ban — and why they were made — has not had an impact across the state line.

Three Democratic state representatives said they hadn’t heard about Texas’ new guidelines until ProPublica asked them about it. “If there are things that work in other states, we should think about that,” said Ashley Hudson, who twice tried to pass broader exceptions.

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On her fourth morning at the hospital, Waldorf was sitting on the toilet when she felt something heavy fall. There was so much blood she couldn’t see what it was. She thought it was the baby, but a nurse confirmed it was a blood clot 3 inches in diameter.

Waldorf’s water had broken. All morning she watched amniotic fluid drain out of her. There was now virtually no chance that the fetal lungs would develop to reach the threshold of viability in seven weeks. There was only the risk of infection, which increased by the hour.

She was convinced that meant doctors would ultimately have to encourage her to avoid infection. But after confirming that her fetus still had heart sounds, the OB-GYN on duty, Dr. Britte Smith, said she couldn’t induce yet. She should first consult the hospital’s risk management team.

“Oh,” thought Waldorf. “I’m a liability.”

Smith returned about two hours later, Waldorf recalled, and told her she had two options: She could remain under observation at the hospital, or she could get in her car and drive nearly four hours to Kansas, a state where abortion is not banned, where doctors could induce her. The hospital did not authorize her transfer or arrange for her to be sent in an ambulance, and provided no explanation as to why she was.

Medical records indicate the risk management team was consulted twice over the next 31 hours, and Smith wrote: “Since if there is still a heartbeat and no signs of maternal infection, we cannot proceed with induction of labor.” Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

Waldorf called the maternal-fetal medicine team at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, the state’s only academic health center. The team explained to her that standard treatment guidelines recommended that she be induced if she did not give birth within 12 to 24 hours, because the risk of infection increases every hour. But they also said, “This can’t be done in Arkansas.” » The hospital told ProPublica it could not comment on Waldorf’s experience.

Waldorf’s sister, Elizabeth Rowe, nearly died of hemorrhage during childbirth. So the family felt that a one-hour drive to Kansas through rural roads without medical assistance was not an option.

Waldorf’s family and friends were shocked that she faced so many obstacles. His father, a gastroenterologist named Kenneth Rodgers, was baffled. “You don’t sit around and wait for someone to become septic. You do whatever it takes to prevent “If I don’t do what is medically indicated in a life-threatening situation, then I am liable for negligence.” Why isn’t that the same thing?

His mother and stepfather were also outraged.

“It’s inhumane,” said his mother, Linda Quattlebaum. “I’m pro-life, but for the mother.” Her husband, Paul Quattlebaum, fumed: “If I took my dog ​​to a vet and he had this problem, that dog would get better treatment.” »

The next morning, day five, 24 hours had passed since Waldorf’s waters broke. She texted a friend from college to inform her that her temperature had risen to 99.3 degrees.

“What’s next?” her friend, Lindsey Haire, responded. “Can they help you now?”

“I think it must be around 100.4,” Waldorf wrote. “They will continue to monitor my temperature or symptoms.”

“Dear lord,” Haire replied.

Waldorf had explained the trap in his journal that morning: “If I need a blood transfusion and it stabilizes my condition, they can’t induce it. If my temperature continues to rise, then they can induce it.”

When his sister, Rowe, came in that morning, she found Waldorf wide-eyed and glassy, ​​his jaw tense. Justin collapsed onto the couch, looking defeated. “Are they going to let me die?” » asked Waldorf.

Rowe had never seen his sister this way; Waldorf was always calm and practical when challenges arose.

“It’s crazy,” Rowe said. “We’re in a hospital. People come to the hospital to save your life, not to let you die.”

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Some hospitals in states that ban abortion have taken steps to protect their patients.

When Ohio was under a six-week lockdown in 2022 and 2023, a group of hospitals in one region came together to develop collective policies, including on miscarriages, said Dr. Justin Lappen, chair of the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine’s reproductive health committee. “Everyone thought at the same time that the worst thing to do would be to have different practices,” he said.

They therefore decided to interpret the vague law in the same way: PPROM was qualified as a medical emergency. “There is power in numbers,” he said. “If we’re going to do something, we need to do it together and be like-minded, because that will hopefully give you some legal protection as well. »

But this is far from the norm. A 2024 Senate Finance Committee report, commissioned following ProPublica’s reporting on Thurman’s death, found that many hospital executives and lawyers left doctors to fend for themselves and sometimes remained “conspicuously and deliberately silent” on how to provide care for miscarriages under the bans.

Doctors described hospital lawyers who “refused to meet with them” for months, were “virtually impossible” to reach in “life or death” scenarios and offered little help beyond “regurgitating” the law, according to the report. Information on how to handle legal conflicts between bans and federal law is generally not written and, in some cases, is provided only on a “need to know” basis.

ProPublica also reported that hospitals in different parts of Texas have taken very different approaches to treating miscarriages — and that miscarriage patients were much more likely to become seriously ill where hospitals did not offer abortions without signs of infection.

Many hospitals in states that ban abortion won’t even disclose their PPROM policies to the public, according to ProPublica investigations. Of 10 hospitals with large labor and delivery rooms in Arkansas, only one responded to ProPublica’s questions.

The University of Arkansas Medical Sciences shared its frequently asked questions on abortion policy which stated in part: “Under Arkansas law, can an abortion be performed if the mother’s life is in danger? It depends.” Only abortions “necessary” to preserve the life of a patient are authorized, and not those which could prevent “possible” emergencies, according to the hospital’s general counsel.

“Hospital executives and facility lawyers are interpreting these laws so conservatively and are so worried about a criminal charge that they have forgotten the core professional values ​​of health care,” said Dr. Jody Steinauer, a professor of OB-GYN at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the impacts of abortion bans.

In interviews with seven doctors who worked in Arkansas, all said no hospital allowed doctors to perform abortions on patients with “unavoidable miscarriage” or PPROM without signs of infection.

Dr. Dina Epstein, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Little Rock, said she and her colleagues often see cases like Waldorf’s. They are always atrocious.

His patients often panic and ask for help, but none have had the resources to travel to another state for treatment. Doctors at his hospital have to negotiate among themselves about what is considered sick enough for them to take action, Epstein said. “What organ has to fail? What thing has to happen to push us over the edge?”

Many hospitals and doctors remain paralyzed, experts say, although none have been prosecuted for treating a miscarriage with a procedure that would be considered an abortion.

“It’s been five years, and people still say, ‘I don’t know what we can do,'” said Ghazaleh Moayedi, a Texas doctor who has consistently offered abortions to women facing miscarriages. “It’s willful ignorance at this point.”

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Rowe racked his brain for something, or someone, that could help his sister.

She began calling private ambulance companies, but they would not agree to drive Waldorf because they considered his condition unstable. The cost of a medevac helicopter was tens of thousands of dollars. Rowe considered putting it on a credit card.

Then it hit her. “Let’s call Sarah,” Rowe said.

The family did not know s Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders personally, but in small-town Baptist circles she was only felt to a degree. Waldorf had gone to the same college, four years late, and joined the same sorority, known as the social club, at Ouachita Baptist University. They had friends whose cousins ​​had attended the governor’s wedding or gone on vacation with her. One of those friends had even invited Waldorf to stay at a historic eight-room bed and breakfast with the governor during Ouachita’s annual alumni event in two weeks.

On Waldorf’s fifth day in the hospital, Rowe contacted an aide in the governor’s office at 9:27 a.m., according to Waldorf’s newspaper. She tried to say more, telling the assistant about the bond Waldorf and Sanders shared.

“We recommend you seek legal advice,” the aide responded.

“It’s an emergency,” Rowe retorted. “We need help now!”

The aide’s response, according to Rowe: “What do you expect from the governor’s office?” »

The sisters had the exception language of the law recorded on a phone. It defines a medical emergency as “a condition in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is threatened by…a physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” Waldorf’s case certainly mattered, they argued, and they begged that someone call the hospital and the attorney general’s office.

The aide offered to find out more and call back, but the family says they never received another call. A friend also called the governor’s office twice and contacted two different aides and got a similar response. ProPublica asked the governor’s office if Sanders was aware of the calls at that time and, if not, what his message would be to women facing these kinds of situations. The spokesperson did not answer questions, but said: “Governor Sanders has prioritized not only the well-being of Arkansas’ unborn children, but also at-risk children and mothers. »

A friend contacted Molly Duane, at the time a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who represented dozens of women deprived of medical care because of the abortion ban. Among them was Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who contracted sepsis and lost a fallopian tube in 2021 after doctors refused to get her pregnant at 18 weeks under circumstances similar to Waldorf’s. In response to this case, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that PPROM should be considered a medical emergency.

When Duane received the call, she was confident she had the expertise and data needed to allay any fears or misunderstandings the hospital might have. “This isn’t a hospital in the middle of nowhere,” Duane said, “This is the hospital where she works. Surely I can convince them that providing quality care is legal.”

His arguments have made little progress. In a conversation with Andrew Cozart, the hospital’s director of risk management, and Thomas Olmstead, its general counsel, Olmstead told her, “We can’t rule out the possibility of an overzealous prosecutor,” she recalled.

Duane sent Cozart evidence it would be a violation of medical standards and the common understanding of the legal exception if the hospital did not offer Waldorf induction. ProPublica reviewed the letter sent by Duane and contacted Cozart and Olmstead, who did not respond to requests for comment.

At 5 p.m., about an hour after the email was sent, Waldorf was coming out of the shower when hospital CEO Larry Shackelford knocked on his door. “Let me put on some clothes first,” she said to the nurse, flustered.

Waldorf was accustomed to seeing Shackelford addressing staff outside a conference room, dressed in a suit and tie. But when he opened the door, he looked disheveled, as if he had gotten up from his desk and run down the hall.

Waldorf and her husband I remember him standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed as she looked at him with her arms crossed. “I feel like a ticking time bomb right now,” Waldorf told him. “I’ve been here five days and you haven’t done anything for me.”

“I’m so sorry you’re in this situation,” the Waldorfs recalled telling Shackelford. “We will take the best care of you.”

He didn’t say much else except to reiterate that she would receive the best care, as if that was all he was allowed to say. When he left, the couple was confused. Was Shackelford saying the hospital was finally going to allow an induction? Or was it a political visit intended to appease them? Shackelford did not respond to a request for comment.

But Large came back and told them the hospital’s decision hadn’t changed. “With a positive fetal heart rate and no signs of maternal distress/serious illness at this time, unable to augment/induce labor to expedite delivery,” the doctor wrote in the medical record; she advised them to consider returning home.

Shortly afterward, Washington regional officials told Duane they would agree to transfer Waldorf to a hospital in Kansas, where gestational abortion was legal. Duane found a team from the University of Kansas Health System about four hours away.

However, before authorizing the transfer, Large told Waldorf she needed to say specific words.

“Repeat after me,” Large said, the Waldorfs and Rowe recalled. “I no longer want to receive care here. I would like to be transferred to another hospital with a higher level of care.”

Waldorf repeated these words and they were noted in his medical records.

By 10:20 p.m., Waldorf was strapped into a five-point harness in the back of an ambulance and began his bumpy ride on rural roads. Her husband and sister followed her, looking anxiously out the window.

Her arrival at the Kansas hospital was nothing like what she experienced in Arkansas, Waldorf wrote. Women in green blouses and hairnets lined up to greet him as his stretcher came out of the elevator. Their leader, Dr. Megan Thomas, spoke first.

“We are very happy that you made it,” she said.

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The University of Kansas hospital system hasn’t always been so helpful.

Two years earlier, his legal team at a separate facility had blocked the care of a woman named Mylissa Farmer for PPROM at 17 weeks, even though the state did not have a sweeping ban on abortion.

The Biden administration investigated the matter as a violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which it interpreted as dictating that hospitals must offer patients abortions in emergency situations, even if they are in banned states.

Federal investigators learned that University of Kansas Health System officials deemed the political climate “too hot and too hot” to help Farmer, according to their report. The government cited the hospital for violating the law and threatened fines if the system did not correct the problems that led to the denial of care. The hospital said Farmer’s care was consistent with hospital policy, medical standards and the law, based on the facts known at the time. The University of Kansas Health System has since become something of a beacon for women in Waldorf’s situation.

It’s hard to see where this kind of accountability effort would come from today.

The Trump administration rescinded Biden-era guidelines urging hospitals to offer emergency abortions and dropped government lawsuits over the issue.

Republican lawmakers in states that imposed bans have not introduced legislation to punish hospitals and doctors who fail to provide care, even though they often blame deaths and injuries hit by bans on malpractice and confusion.

And state medical boards, which oversee the licensing of doctors, have not disciplined doctors who allegedly refused to perform a medically necessary abortion during a miscarriage, including doctors involved in the care of Barnica, Zurawski and Farmer.

If the Arkansas Medical Board could issue guidelines on PPROM like Texas’, it would help tremendously, doctors told ProPublica. “It answers the vagueness and all the specific questions we have as providers,” said Epstein, the Little Rock doctor.

Even the prominent anti-abortion advocacy group, Americans United for Life, told ProPublica that it agrees with Texas’ position on treating predictable PPROM.

ProPublica asked the Arkansas Medical Board, the governor’s office and Republican lawmakers who sponsored the abortion ban if they planned to issue similar guidelines.

The Arkansas Board of Regents told ProPublica the law is already clear enough. Medical boards in 18 other states that have banned abortion said they had no plans to issue new guidelines or had not responded to ProPublica’s questions.

The governor’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s questions.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Mary Bentley, a Republican state representative and lead sponsor of the original ban, said she believed the law allowed doctors to provide abortions to women with PPROM and that they did not need to wait for signs of infection. She said she was contacting the medical board to see if it could issue guidelines similar to those in Texas and would work to develop more legislation if necessary.

“Medical decisions should not be made by lawyers,” she said. “We just need to make things better for them. The women of our state truly deserve it.”

The courts are one of the last levers of accountability. Abortion rights groups, including Amplify Legal, where Molly Duane is now litigation director, have sued at least 13 states over their laws, sometimes forcing judges to issue clarifying statements — though their impact has been limited so far.

A Texas lawyer has started filing malpractice lawsuits. Michelle Maloney represents 10 women or their families who allege doctors failed to provide medical care that should have been considered legal under the abortion law’s medical emergency exception.

“I think this is the most effective way to incentivize hospital systems to do what they need to do to support physicians,” Maloney said. “If we can create risks of On the other hand, we hope we can motivate people to do the right thing. »

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Shortly after Waldorf arrived at the Kansas hospital, she was given misoprostol to induce labor and delivered around 1 p.m.

She and Justin held their daughter for a few precious moments as her heartbeat stopped, marveling at her perfect little fingers and toes and whispering private words of love.

They named her Bee, in honor of the interconnectedness of the natural world, so they could see memories of her every spring.

Then the tenor in the room turned around. Waldorf’s placenta was having difficulty detaching. The blood continued to flow, soaking the pads in its dark red. The nurse continued to weigh them.

“Is that a lot of blood?” » Waldorf asked, his eyes fixed on those of the nurse.

“That’s a lot of blood,” the nurse replied.

The monitor started beeping. Waldorf’s blood pressure was dangerously low. Justin saw his wife’s face turn pale.

Working in the intensive care unit, Waldorf had seen patients die with this exact combination of symptoms. “This is it,” she thought.

A doctor reached up to his elbow into her uterus, trying to detach the placenta. The team was getting ready to take her to the operating room when they finally managed to untie her.

Doctors said she lost a liter of blood and her complications were likely worse because she had to wait so long to give birth.

Waldorf realized that if she had given birth at home or on the road, there was no way she would have been able to get to the hospital on time.

In Waldorf’s medical records, Kansas doctors said the induction was performed “in an effort to preserve the life and health of the mother.” It included four dense paragraphs citing evidence of the high risks of sepsis and hemorrhage if the medical team waited to empty her uterus.

Some hospitals in banned states have provided similar pre-written language that their doctors can use to remove any ambiguity about why an abortion falls under an emergency exception. Washington Regional, which has not provided such guidelines to its doctors, declined to comment on its policies. None of the doctors involved in Waldorf’s care at Washington Regional agreed to discuss the case.

Back home, Waldorf’s mother came to stay. Waldorf continued to bleed so much that she would not go out in public and suffered from headaches for a week. In her journal, she unpacked her grief and rage.

“It all sounds rather like the Handmaid’s Tale,” she wrote on September 24. “I had to seek refuge, traveling by ambulance across borders.”

She and Justin struggled to explain to their daughter what happened when she asked when her little sister would be arriving. They told her she wouldn’t come anymore, until the girl finally stopped asking.

Alumni weekend has arrived. Waldorf had canceled the B&B stay with the governor, but she decided seeing her community could be healing. During the opening ceremony, the emcee announced Sanders’ presence and the audience stood to applaud. Waldorf remained seated. So did his mother and stepfather, who had supported the governor for years.

His father-in-law ripped Sanders’ bumper sticker off his car and let local politicians know what had happened.

On December 8, the day before she returned to work, Waldorf found herself frantically cleaning her house and lashing out at her daughter.

The next morning, she could barely get out of the car. Upon entering the Washington area, she was flooded with memories of the days she had spent there as a patient and how her colleagues and the CEO had been unable to help her.

A month later, she submitted her letter of resignation. The decision helped her feel lighter, she wrote. “Sold out. Free.” She started her own physical therapy practice that spring, naming it Hive Therapy in Bee’s honor.

She estimates the lost income, startup debt and direct medical costs resulting from her ordeal at more than $147,000. The tally included more than $5,000 for the ambulance ride to Kansas, which the Washington area was unwilling to pay.

In a letter to Duane, the hospital’s general counsel, Thomas Olmstead, used Waldorf’s words against her — the words Large had asked her to repeat.

The ambulance transfer occurred because of Waldorf’s “specific request,” he wrote, not because the treating physician believed Waldorf needed a “higher level of care.”

“It is simply not reasonable for you to require WRMC to assume responsibility for the cost of a patient-directed transfer,” he wrote. Olmstead has since been promoted to executive management. He did not respond to a request for comment.

When reached for comment, Large would not talk about Waldorf’s case even though Waldorf had given her permission to do so. But, she said, “I’m glad the topic at hand is being discussed, because it’s extremely important. I’m glad his voice is being heard.”

The Arkansas Medical Board said it is not currently investigating any complaints against the doctors. Local attorneys did not want to take on a malpractice case because Waldorf did not die or suffer permanent injuries.

A year after leaving her job, in February 2026, Waldorf joined a lawsuit led by Duane, alongside an obstetrician-gynecologist and five other women deprived of care under Arkansas’ abortion law. He seeks to block the state’s ban on the grounds that it violates the state constitution; The defendants are Sanders, the Arkansas attorney general, state prosecutors and members of the state medical board. The state is currently trying to have the case dismissed. For jurisdictional reasons, the governor’s office told ProPublica: “Governor Sanders looks forward to defending Arkansas’ pro-life laws in court.” »

Waldorf’s personal story and deep roots in Arkansas appear to have attracted the attention of people who don’t typically follow abortion policy. Boys she knew in college who she hadn’t spoken to in 20 years told her how upset they were to hear about her experience. A pastor she had known since childhood defended her on Facebook against anti-abortion attacks. Friends who describe themselves as “pro-life” have written lengthy messages explaining how sick her story has made them and how they want the law to change.

Waldorf said she hopes sharing the details of her trauma could finally make a difference. But that didn’t stop him from reliving it all again. Fayetteville is small. Hardly a day goes by without her running into former hospital co-workers – at the grocery store, at the cafe or at school pick-up. Recently, she saw Large at a few booths at a local restaurant.

Each encounter brings it all back again. Ultrasounds. “Risk management”. Blood, so much blood.

But also the border between the state and the state. The relief she felt as she passed through it.