In the photo she posted on Facebook, Amber Nicole Thurman looks radiant. Kneeling in the surf, the 28-year-old clutches her six-year-old son as the waves break around them, both with matching smiles. It’s the kind of photo every mom can relate to.
A year later, Thurman would die because of the state of Georgia’s law that prohibits abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. It seems an almost absurdly cruel irony that this lawwhich went into effect in 2022 after the overthrow of Roe v. Wade, it’s called the Living Infants and Fairness Equality, or “LIFE” Act.
Thurman’s story is one of two published by ProPublica this week examining the impact of Georgia’s ban on maternal health, and what reporter Kavitha Surana discovered was devastating. He found that the death of Thurman and another woman from Georgia, Candi Millermay be directly related to their inability to access abortion care under the new law.
“There are almost certainly others,” he notes, not just in Georgia, but elsewhere where abortion has been restricted.
Both women died in 2022, just weeks or months after the bill was passed. Thurman had discovered she was pregnant with twins in July and decided to terminate the pregnancy. However, she had just missed the opportunity to have an abortion under the new law, as her pregnancy had just passed the six-week mark.
After waiting a few weeks to see if the law would be overturned, Thurman and a friend traveled to North Carolina to have a legal abortion when she was nine weeks pregnant. At the clinic, which was overrun with other patients from outlawed abortion states, Thurman was unable to have a surgical abortion and instead was given abortion pills.
Despite following the clinic’s instructions, Thurman began experiencing complications such as heavy bleeding. Then he started vomiting blood. Her boyfriend called an ambulance and Thurman was transported to a hospital.
Medical experts consulted by ProPublica said it should have been clear that Thurman had a life-threatening complication based on her symptoms. But even after an on-call OB diagnosed her with “severe acute sepsis” due to retained tissue from her abortion, the staff did not perform a D&C, the common surgical procedure to remove septic tissue . Instead, they gave Thurman antibiotics and an IV drip and waited.
Experts cited by ProPublica said one of the potential outcomes of the restrictive abortion ban is that it forces medical professionals to decide whether a patient’s condition is essentially “bad enough” to warrant intervention and weigh that against the threat of prosecution if he is found to be doing so. error.
When medical professionals decided to treat Thurman with a D&C 20 hours after she arrived, it was too late. Thurman died during surgery. A maternal mortality review committee later determined that if Thurman had been treated earlier, there is a “good chance” she would still be alive.
Miller’s story, published Wednesday, while different, has some similarities. The 41-year-old mother of three also experienced excruciating pain after attempting a medication abortion at home in November 2022, and her abortion still did not fully expel all fetal tissue. In the report, family members told ProPublica that Miller had ordered the pills online because she was afraid to see a doctor or go to a clinic “because of the current legislation on pregnancy and abortion.”