Mbayme Ndoye told the New York Post she did not realize she was pregnant when she went to Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. Ndoye, who works at Saks Fifth Avenue, had been having cramps and felt sick.

Doctors in the Roosevelt emergency room told her she was pregnant and the fertilized egg had implanted in the fallopian tube, she said in court papers. Ectopic pregnancies must be terminated.

She was advised to get a chemical abortion. When she returned to the hospital for a second shot of methotrexate, she was told the first diagnosis was mistaken.

"I would expect things like that to happen in a Third World country, not here," said Ndoye, who comes from Senegal. "I still don't understand how this could happen."

Her attorney, Brian Brown, who filed the lawsuit, said she had been through "an expectant mother's worst nightmare."