The Florida agency in charge of regulating health-care facilities in the state is reviewing a report in the Washington Post that two pregnant women were not provided the proper standard of care when their water broke before viability.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration’s communications director Bailey Smith tells National Review in an email: “The Agency is currently reviewing the information in the article. Anyone with a complaint about a facility can contact the Agency’s Complaint Administration Unit at 1-888-419-3456 or use our online Licensed Health Care Facility Complaint Form.” Smith did not say whether any complaints related to the report had been filed and noted that although the “Agency cannot discuss individual complaints,” any “completed inspection reports are made available on the Agency’s public records search page.”

As National Review reported on Monday, Florida’s existing 15-week abortion limit should not have prevented hospitals from offering to immediately induce delivery when a pregnant mother’s water breaks before viability, a life-threatening condition that places a woman at risk of sepsis or hemorrhaging:

Florida’s 15-week limit on abortion, a law that has been in effect since July 2022, includes an exception to protect the life and physical health of the mother. Specifically, the text of the law says that the exception applies whenever two physicians certify in their reasonable medical judgment that terminating a pregnancy is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman or to “avert a serious risk” of “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman other than a psychological condition.” If the threat is imminent, a second physician’s certification is not necessary….

A pregnant woman’s water breaking before viability is a life-threatening condition because “it’s very, very hard to predict who’s going to get really sick really fast,” Dr. Ingrid Skop, a pro-life obstetrician-gynecologist based in Texas, told National Review in a phone interview. An infection is often present before it can be detected. As Skop, who also serves as director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research affiliate of the largest national pro-life group (Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America), told NR back in July 2022: “I say this as a pro-life physician: It is appropriate to deliver at that point. Because we know that likelihood that four days, six days [later], she’s going to be clinically infected. We know that the likelihood this child was going to make it to be born alive, to stay alive, not die in the neonatal period, is super low.” Despite the very low odds of the baby’s surviving, sometimes a mother will choose “expectant management” — watchful waiting — but as Skop said: “If [the mother] wants delivery at the time of initial diagnosis, it is the standard of care to do so and is allowed by all state pro-life laws.”

But the Washington Post published a gut-wrenching report on Monday about two separate cases in which hospitals dangerously delayed care for women experiencing this condition in Broward County, Fla., in December 2022.

After Anya Cook’s water broke nearly 16 weeks into her pregnancy, Broward Health Hospital in Coral Springs did not offer to induce delivery and instead sent Cook home, the Post reports:

When the doctor finally saw [Cook], he delivered the distressing news, they said: Anya was experiencing PPROM — and because of the state’s abortion law, he could not induce labor. She could not stay at the hospital, either, she said she was told.

Because she was so early in her pregnancy, she recalled the doctor saying, there was no chance her baby would survive. . . .

The Post, with Cook’s consent, read relevant portions of the records to four physicians, all of whom agreed that Cook had a clear case of pre-viability PPROM, making her high-risk for infection and hemorrhage.

A spokeswoman for Broward Health, Jennifer Smith, did not directly address PPROM, and declined to make the doctor who treated Cook available for an interview. But she said in an interview that Cook was “not at risk” when she left the hospital after her water broke.

“There was no indication she needed any interventional care,” said Smith, the hospital’s vice president for corporate communications and marketing.

Broward’s policy on pregnancy termination, obtained through a public records request to the public hospital, mirrors the language in Florida’s abortion law.

Cook “did not necessitate an abortion in the emergency department,” Smith wrote in a statement. “Had her condition failed to improve or worsened to result in a threat to her life or irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function, Ms. Cook would have been admitted for further care and treatment.”

So the Broward Health spokeswoman flatly claims that Cook was “not at risk” when she left the hospital, while four physicians told the Post “that Cook had a clear case of pre-viability PPROM, making her high-risk for infection and hemorrhage.”

In a separate case of PPROM, Shanae Smith-Cunningham was sent home from Broward hospital HCA Florida Northwest:

HCA Florida Northwest provides abortions in cases where a physician believes that “a medical emergency exists or the fetus exhibits a fatal anomaly,” Jennifer Guerrieri, the hospital’s vice president of strategic communications, said in a statement.

“Our focus is on providing the best possible care for our patients. Our hospital policies and procedures align with state and federal regulatory requirements.”

Again, Florida’s abortion law does not require waiting until a threat to the mother’s life becomes imminent. It specifically permits terminating a pregnancy to “avert” — a synonym for prevent or avoid — a “serious risk” to the physical health of the mother. PPROM places the mother at risk of life-threatening sepsis or hemorrhaging, and it places the mother at risk of permanent damage to a major bodily function.

Broward Health did not answer questions submitted by email from National Review on Wednesday. HCA Florida Northwest replied to questions with the statement previously issued to the Washington Post.