Harmonie Perrone, 28, said she knew the symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy from previous experience — sharp pain, bleeding, the knowledge that her life was at risk if she did not act quickly. Having already lost her right fallopian tube to an earlier ectopic pregnancy, she had saved her left tube by receiving the drug methotrexate in time. This time, she went to Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, expecting the same standard care.
Instead, Perrone said in the lawsuit filed Monday in state court, she was sent home with an appointment the next day to see an obstetrician-gynecologist she was told was a specialist.
The hospital performed ultrasounds and detected a mass on her remaining fallopian tube, Perrone said. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends administering methotrexate as soon as possible after an ectopic pregnancy is diagnosed; the drug stops cell growth and dissolves the pregnancy tissue, allowing the fallopian tube to heal.
“I wanted to get methotrexate,” Perrone said in an interview with the Guardian. “I knew that this was the standard practice.”
Perrone said she was directed to Dr. Dympna Coll, whom she met at what turned out to be a med spa, not a hospital. Perrone alleged that Coll refused to administer methotrexate.
“I kept asking her to help me,” Perrone said. According to Perrone, the doctor told her, “we have to weigh out the life of the mother and the baby, and there’s a 1% chance that there is a baby in there.” When Perrone asked about her right to an abortion under Illinois law, the doctor responded, “You’re not going to bully me into doing this,” Perrone said.
Advocate Good Shepherd and Coll did not respond to the Guardian’s press inquiries by publication time.
Perrone eventually received methotrexate at a second hospital more than 24 hours after she first sought care. Six days later, while standing at a sales meeting for work, she felt intense pain.
“When they were opening me up, my tube was already rupturing,” Perrone said. “That was the end of my fertility.”
Allison Siebeneck, director of the Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project at the ACLU of Illinois, which is supporting Perrone’s lawsuit, said Illinois law explicitly covers Perrone’s situation. The Illinois Hospital Emergency Service Act identifies ectopic pregnancy as an acute medical condition requiring stabilizing care, and requires immediate transfer if the facility cannot provide it. A separate Illinois law, the Health Care Right of Conscience Act, does not apply in the context of emergency care, Siebeneck said.
“A hospital under federal law as well as state law has to both screen the patient and either stabilize them or to transfer them,” Siebeneck said. “You can’t just say: ‘OK, bye.’”
The lawsuit includes a federal complaint alleging the hospital violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires Medicare-participating hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment in emergency situations regardless of a patient’s insurance status or ability to pay.
Molly Duane, litigation director of Amplify Legal, which is also involved in Perrone’s lawsuit, said the case shows a broader problem. “Religiously affiliated hospitals like Advocate Good Shepherd are effectively administering shadow abortion bans everywhere in the country,” Duane said.
After Perrone went public on TikTok about her experience — first about the denial of care and then about the loss of her fertility — her videos went viral. She then received a knock on the door: Dr. Coll had filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
“Not only has she lost her ability to have children without IVF, but she’s now being sued for speaking out about that experience,” Duane said.
Perrone said she is hesitant to pursue in vitro fertilization because of the cost and the emotional toll. “If I save, and I maybe open a credit card and I go and do this for myself and it doesn’t work, that’s another letdown,” she said. “That’s a lot of hope to be crushed over and over and over again.”
Illinois is considered a haven state for abortion access, where reproductive rights are protected by state law. But Perrone’s experience shows that protection can depend on which hospital’s emergency room a patient walks into, Siebeneck said.
“We don’t want people to be deterred or to be afraid that they cannot access this care because of stories like this one,” she said.