A red “Emergency” sign hangs above the entrance to a hospital.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – The family of a woman whose death following an abortion sparked a measure of outrage will get a second chance in court to blame those who treated her.
The Michigan Court of Appeals on Aug. 4 reopened the civil lawsuit brought by Timothy Bennett, the brother of Cree Erwin-Sheppard, in Kalamazoo Circuit Court. Health care professionals had won judgment there after arguing Bennett’s lawyers couldn’t prove what killed Erwin-Sheppard, but the appellate court said that was premature.
Her death spurred calls from a pro-life group to Planned Parenthood for an apology and put her on the website for the Remember Her project. An autopsy listed her cause of death as pulmonary emboli related to a uterine blood clot and a uterine perforation.
“The trial court’s determination rests on the conclusion that causation cannot be established because the precise origin of the fatal emboli cannot be known,” the appeals court wrote.
“But plaintiff was not required to identify a particular clot and then trace that clot’s progression through the decedent’s body. Instead, plaintiff only needed to establish ‘a reasonable likelihood of probability’ and ‘a fair amount of certainty.’”
And expert testimony from the plaintiff could convince a reasonable jury that timely recognition of the uterine perforation could have saved her life, the court added.
The abortion was performed June 30, 2016, during which an intrauterine contraceptive device was implanted. But days later, Erwin-Sheppard was at Bronson Hospital with constant and severe lower abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting.
The emergency room doctor noted “no clots” and ordered a transabdominal ultrasound, with a transvaginal ultrasound if necessary. Only the former was performed, and Erwin-Sheppard was discharged with pain and nausea meds and instructions to follow up with her primary care physician or Planned Parenthood after the July 4 weekend. When she left the hospital, she still complained that her pain level was a 7 out of 10.
Twenty-four hours later, her mother found her unconscious and unresponsive in a bedroom. The subsequent lawsuit alleges that had doctors followed the standard of care, a uterine perforation and its potential for creating blood clots would have been found and treated.
Defendants argued that even if the thrombosis had occurred by the time she was at the hospital, a transvaginal ultrasound may not have detected it and that treatment of it might not have mattered.
No expert could definitively identify the source of the embolism, a Kalamazoo judge ruled. The Court of Appeals has decided to put that issue before a jury who will hear, if the case makes it to trial, the perforation should have been recognized at Planned Parenthood.
Another expert will testify Erwin-Sheppard could have been saved had she been treated with the blood-thinner heparin, and a pathology expert will say that if it hadn’t been for the perforation, she wouldn’t have developed blood clots.
Erwin-Sheppard already had one child and died on his first birthday.
