3 months ago
13
Amber Nicole Thurman
, a 28-year-old Black single mother from Georgia, died from a severe infection after a hospital delayed a procedure due to Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. This is the first verified death linked to abortion bans following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, as confirmed by
ProPublica
's recent report.
A state committee reviewing pregnancy-related deaths had deemed Thurman’s death in August 2022 as “preventable.”
Mini Timmaraju
, president of
Reproductive Freedom for All
, said, as quoted by Mother Jones, “We actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew that abortion bans kill people.”
Thurman sought an abortion after discovering she was pregnant with twins.
After Georgia implemented its six-week abortion ban, she traveled to North Carolina, where abortion is allowed past 20 weeks. She took mifepristone and misoprostol, but complications arose, and she began bleeding severely. A dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure was needed to remove remaining fetal tissue and prevent sepsis. However, the North Carolina clinic could not perform the D&C as Thurman was not a resident nearby.
Thurman was eventually taken to a hospital in the suburbs of Atlanta. Despite showing signs of infection, she did not receive the D&C until the next day, leading to her death during surgery. ProPublica reported that the Georgia
maternal mortality
review committee found that an earlier D&C could have likely prevented her death.
Timmaraju said, “These devastating bans did not only block Amber, and many others, from accessing abortion care in her state, they also delayed the routine life-saving care she later needed, leaving her to suffer and die.”
KR Redman, executive director of SPARK, said, as quoted by Mother Jones, “Reproductive justice is not just about
abortion access
, but also about the broader right to quality, comprehensive, full-range, culturally humble care, life-saving health care for all of us. Amber’s case is just an example of the ongoing systemic negligence that continues to claim the lives of Black folks.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), abortion bans include exceptions to save the life of the pregnant person, but uncertainty among medical providers about when they can act without fear of prosecution has caused delays in emergency care. This has disproportionately impacted Black women, who are 2.6 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.
Earlier this year, Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, a woman in Texas, reportedly died from complications of a high-risk pregnancy in July 2022.
