MassLive | Worcester woman suing Clearway Clinic claims missed diagnosis put her life at risk
Story Originally Appeared in MassLive
A Worcester woman is suing a crisis pregnancy center in the city, claiming a missed diagnosis there led to a life-threatening situation that required her to have invasive emergency surgery, according to court records.
The woman, who is only identified as Jane Doe, filed the class action suit against Clearway Clinic seeking “relief” in Worcester Superior Court on Thursday.
“We cannot speak as to any individual’s medical claims or history due to HIPAA regulations,” Clearway Clinic CEO Jill Jorgensen said in a statement. “Clearway Clinic 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. We hope to continue to provide needed services to women and their families in Massachusetts for many more years.”
In the suit, the woman claims she made an appointment at Clearway Clinic on Shrewsbury Street after looking up ultrasound services online.
During her appointment in October 2022, she claims she was told she had a viable pregnancy, according to a press statement from Reproductive Equity Now, an organization that advocates for protection and expansion of “abortion access and reproductive equity for everyone,” according to its website. However, a month later, the woman says she experienced a sharp and shooting pain and had to be rushed to the emergency room.
The woman was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, which ruptured and caused internal hemorrhaging. She had to undergo emergency surgery to stop the bleeding that resulted in the removal of one of her fallopian tubes, according to the statement from Reproductive Equity Now.
The lawsuit alleges that the nurse who performed the ultrasound at Clearway Clinic a month prior to the rupture did not “undertake sufficient medical measures to assure (her) that her pregnancy was in utero and thus viable.”
If she had the standard level of care, the suit claims, her ectopic pregnancy would have been identified and she could have gotten the treatment she needed to terminate the pregnancy and avoided a life-threatening situation.
“Clearway misleads patients, through its advertising, medical documentation, and informational materials, that it will perform ultrasounds to determine the viability of intrauterine pregnancy,” the suit claims. “These statements are false, as ultrasounds performed do not meet standard levels of medical care which cause misdiagnosis, including in Plaintiff’s case failing to identify a life threatening ectopic pregnancy.”
Clearway Clinic has been dubbed a crisis pregnancy center and is on Reproductive Equity Now’s list of “fake women’s health centers.”
In its guide to abortion care, the advocacy organization advises people to beware of these centers it’s deemed “fake.”
Crisis pregnancy centers often set themselves up near abortion clinics and are sometimes funded by organizations “that oppose abortion in any and all circumstances,” Reproductive Equity Now says on its website.
“This case is further proof that anti-abortion centers like Clearway not only harm the health and safety of people seeking abortion, but also patients in need of basic pregnancy care,” Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said in a statement Thursday. “Anti-abortion centers engage in deceptive advertising practices to lure pregnant people into their clinics before providing patients with disinformation to dissuade them from accessing abortion.”
By failing to offer safe or legitimate health services, Hart Holder said, facilities like Clearway Clinic are putting patients at serious risk.
In the suit, it claims that the nurses providing care at the clinic are not licensed to diagnose pregnancies or practice medicine, despite the clinic providing promotional materials stating the diagnoses are done by a doctor and the plaintiff receiving paperwork from her visit listing an “Erin Kate Dooley, MD.”
The suit states that Clearway Clinic’s goal is to “dissuade women from terminating their pregnancies rather than providing them with the range of medically appropriate options.”
Two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a 50-year-old ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, Clearway Clinic was one of two crisis pregnancy centers vandalized in Worcester. The clinic had all of its windows smashed and the words “Jane’s Revenge” spray-painted outside the clinic.
“We are deeply saddened that misunderstandings about what we do have led to pro-abortion extremists targeting our center,” the clinic said in a statement released after the vandalism. “However, we are committed to continuing our mission of serving women in our community.”
The suit brought against Clearway Clinic is a class action suit, meaning people who have sought medical care there who feel they have been similarly mistreated or misled can join onto the suit and/or potentially benefit from any restitution ordered by the judge.
“Clearway’s actions are not only illegal, but abhorrent,” attorney for the plaintiff Shannon Liss-Riordan said in a statement. “Our client was forced to undergo a traumatic, dangerous, and completely avoidable emergency surgery to save her life because she was deceived into going to an anti-abortion clinic instead of an appropriate healthcare provider.”