the doc didn't notice a pregnancy six months along?
I wondered about that too. But some women don't show much at 6 months, and she was probably prepped by a nurse, with whom the patient also couldn't communicate. By the time the doctor saw her, she was probably lying on one of those stirrup-beds, with a sheet covering her abdomen. The doctor was probably handed a chart with information on the other Mrs. Vo, and what procedure he was supposed to do on her. He probably tried to communicate with her, and wasn't able to get much more out of her than that she was "Mrs. Vo". It wouldn't have been very far into such a procedure that the damage would have been done.
Perhaps there was some culpability here, on the nurses' and/or the doctor's part, for failure to observe all administrative procedures for identifying patients -- or perhaps not, if they asked the patient, Thi-Nho Vo, if her full name was "Thanh Van Vo" and in her general non-comprehension of French, or their less than fluent pronunciation of Vietnamese, she nodded affirmatively. But there certainly was no homicide here. It seems clear that she didn't speak enough French that they could have gleaned from her whether she was in fact there to have a coil removed. If they'd refused to treat her because she didn't speak French, she'd probably have sued them for that.
The moral of this sad story is that people need to learn the language of whaever country they're living in, and if they're just travelling through, or have just arrived, they need to be prepared to provide an interpreter or risk suffering serious consequences due to misunderstandings.
I don't want any U.S. doctors facing homicide charges because some non-English speaker shows up at an emergency room in pain and pointing to her mid-section, but can't explain that she's pregnant and feels as if she may be starting to miscarry, and the doctor can't figure out what's going on until it's too late.