Last September, New York resident Tara Rule posted a raw, emotional video on Tiktok saying she had been denied a medication to treat a debilitating condition called cluster headaches, because her neurologist told her she was of “childbearing age” and the medication could cause birth defects to a hypothetical fetus.
Rule said that as she sat in her neurologist’s office at Glens Falls Hospital, she told him she never planned to have kids and would have an abortion if she became pregnant; referencing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he responded that getting the care she was seeking is “trickier now with the way things are going.” He also said she should bring her partner “in on the conversation” on her medical care. Rule asked if the issue preventing her from getting the “highly effective” medication was solely that she could become pregnant and, “If I was, like, through menopause, would [the medication] be very effective for cluster headaches?” The doctor affirmed it would. He also asked about her sex life and whether she’s “with a steady person.” Rule shared audio recordings of the appointment on TikTok at the time.
Last week, Rule filed a lawsuit against Albany Medical Health Partners charging the largest hospital system in upstate New York with discrimination over the denial of her medication and a string of incidents afterward. […] In addition to Rule’s allegations of discrimination, her suit accuses Albany Medical Health Partners of privacy violations and fraud. According to Rule, after she shared audio recordings of her interactions with the neurologist on TikTok, an employee at the hospital contacted another hospital in the area, alleging that Rule livestreamed her appointments. This led to Rule’s removal from the second hospital, Malta Medical (also under Albany Medical Health Partners), in the middle of treatment for her cluster headaches. Rule denies livestreaming. In the lawsuit, Rule alleges her nurse practitioner at Malta discharged her against her will with the help of armed security, but her insurance company was told that she voluntarily left mid-treatment, which Rule argues amounts to falsification of records. Rule also alleges that the nurse practitioner who had her removed at Malta violated her privacy rights by sending Facebook messages to Rule’s partner that include her medical details.
Rule’s case shows how the notion of fetal personhood—an ideology that regards embryos as separate people with rights at odds with the pregnant person’s—can be taken even further, said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director at Pregnancy Justice (which isn’t working on Rule’s case). “What we’re seeing is how this ideology can extend beyond pregnancy itself—the idea that if you can even become pregnant, then you can no longer make decisions about your own body or access medical care,” Sussman told Jezebel.