No fetus is viable at 16 weeks (4 months), so a c-section would have been a purposeless invasive surgery. The amniotic sac had ruptured, and the fetus was too premature to use drugs to postpone delivery. However, because there was still a fetal heartbeat, per the law, they couldn't induce an immediate miscarriage or otherwise terminate the pregnancy unless " the mother has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function." Her condition wasn't, at that point, life threatening. Since labor typically proceeds from the rupture of the amniotic sac within 24 hours, the doctor opted to let nature take its course and sent her home, advising her to watch for infection. The problem is that she did not go into labor within 24 hours and by 72 hours following her water breaking, an antibiotic resistant infection had set in. Had the doctor not been constrained by both the "life threatening" language of the law and the heartbeat threshold, normal protocol would have been followed and labor would have been induced when she first presented, as there is no medical means of saving a 16-week pregnancy once the amniotic sac breaks.