First Confirmed Death in Georgia Woman Due to Denied Post-Roe Abortion

For years, proponents of reproductive rights have cautioned that bans and limitations on abortion, currently implemented in 22 states across the U.S., would result in the deaths of pregnant individuals. However, these warnings have been labeled as “overblown” by conservative legislators and activists.

This Monday, new investigative work shone a spotlight on the case of a woman whose death, deemed “avoidable,” was the consequence of an abortion prohibition. As reported by ProPublica, “there are almost certainly others.”

The publication unveiled the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old single mother residing in Georgia, who discovered she was pregnant in July 2022. This was only weeks after the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and just as Georgia’s six-week abortion ban was being implemented.

Thurman had just passed the six-week threshold of her pregnancy when the ban was enacted on July 20, which included “exceptions” that Republicans claimed would permit doctors to treat pregnant individuals who were experiencing life-threatening complications.

Unable to obtain an abortion in her home state, Thurman, a medical assistant planning to attend nursing school and who had recently moved into an apartment with her son, arranged for a dilation and curettage (D&C)—a surgical abortion procedure—at a clinic in North Carolina, which was roughly four hours away. The logistics of this appointment required her to take a day off work, arrange for childcare, and borrow a car from a relative.

On her way to the clinic, Thurman encountered severe traffic and missed her appointment. With abortion restrictions coming into effect across the Southeast, the clinic was inundated with patients from out-of-state and was unable to reschedule her D&C procedure.

As an alternative, she was given the abortion drugs misoprostol and mifepristone, and took the first pill before embarking on her return journey to Georgia, planning to take the second pill once she was back home.

After ingesting the second pill, Thurman suffered a rare complication with some of the fetal tissue remaining in her uterus.

Prior to the enactment of Georgia’s abortion ban, she would have been able to receive a D&C, with doctors removing the residual tissue—a common procedure and the standard treatment for a miscarriage.

As ProPublica highlighted, the year following the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, which confirmed that abortion care was a constitutional right in the U.S., the newfound availability of D&Cs for abortion and miscarriages cut the maternal mortality rate for women of color by as much as 40%.

But when Thurman arrived at Piedmont Henry Hospital in the Atlanta suburb of Stockbridge—having experienced increasing pain and heavy bleeding before vomiting blood and fainting—she encountered a medical team that delayed providing her the standard care for approximately 20 hours.

ProPublica pointed out that the “alleged lifesaving exceptions” in Georgia’s six-week abortion ban prohibit doctors from using medical instruments “with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy,” and specify that procedures such as a D&C can only be used if fetal tissue needs to be removed due to a “spontaneous abortion”—the medical term for a miscarriage.

Thurman had informed the doctors that she had undergone a medication abortion, which Republican state lawmakers hadn’t included in the exceptions—implying she shouldn’t be given care since she’d decided to terminate her pregnancy. Violating the law could lead to a prosecution and a prison sentence of up to ten years for a physician.

The following morning, after Thurman had arrived at the hospital at around 9:30 pm on August 18, 2022, with an ultrasound showing fetal tissue still present in Thurman’s body, a doctor diagnosed “acute severe sepsis,” but it was still several hours before the staff provided care to remove the tissue.

According to ProPublica:

By 5:14 a.m., Thurman was breathing rapidly and at risk of bleeding out, according to her vital signs. Even five liters of IV fluid had not moved her blood pressure out of the danger zone. Doctors escalated the antibiotics.

[…]

At 6:45 a.m., Thurman’s blood pressure continued to dip, and she was taken to the intensive care unit.

At 7:14 a.m., doctors discussed initiating a D&C. But it still didn’t happen. Two hours later, lab work indicated her organs were failing, according to experts who read her vital signs.

At 12:05 p.m., more than 17 hours after Thurman had arrived, a doctor who specializes in intensive care notified the OB-GYN that her condition was deteriorating.

Thurman was finally taken to an operating room at 2 p.m.

By then, the situation was so dire that doctors started with open abdominal surgery. They found that her bowel needed to be removed, but it was too risky to operate because not enough blood was flowing to the area—a possible complication from the blood pressure medication, an expert told ProPublica. The OB performed the D&C but immediately continued with a hysterectomy.

During surgery, Thurman’s heart stopped.

The state’s maternal mortality review board, comprising 10 physicians, concluded that the hospital’s decision to delay providing care for nearly an entire day had a “significant” impact on Thurman’s “avoidable” death.

ProPublica identified another woman from Georgia whose death was a result of delayed abortion care due to the state’s ban, and intends to report on her story in the near future.

“This is the outcome of abortion bans,” stated author and activist Jessica Valenti.

Columnist Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times wrote that “it was only a matter of time” before it was revealed that an abortion ban had caused a pregnant individual’s death.

“The devastating repercussions of abortion prohibition were entirely foreseeable for anyone who has monitored such bans in other nations,” Goldberg wrote, referring to the 2012 case in Ireland of Savita Halappanavar, who died of septicemia after doctors refused to treat her for a miscarriage because her fetus still had a heartbeat.

“In Ireland, the name Savita became a rallying cry” that led voters to overwhelmingly approve a referendum making abortion legal, wrote Goldberg. “The name Amber should serve the same purpose here.”

On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, addressed Thurman’s story, stating her death is “exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down.”

“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” said Harris. “Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again… And now women are dying. These are the consequences of [Republican candidate] Donald Trump’s actions.”

A spokesperson for Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office dismissed the medical board’s conclusion that Thurman’s death could have been prevented if not for the state’s abortion ban, telling ProPublica that the law allows doctors to provide care in medical emergencies and labeling the outlet’s reporting a “scare tactics campaign.”

However, Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of progressive advocacy group Indivisible, said Thurman’s death “was not a tragic mistake.”

“It is the logical outcome of the Georgia abortion ban working exactly as intended,” said Greenberg, “by horrifically punishing women who try to access abortion care.”