The first documented report of two women’s deaths linked to state anti-abortion laws, made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, thus eliminating women’s constitutional reproductive rights, was reported last week by the investigative news outlet ProPublica. Georgia resident Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother, died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat rare complications that occurred after she took abortion pills.
The news organization also reported that a second woman from Georgia, Candi Miller, died after she avoided seeing a doctor after taking abortion pills that caused unusual complications out of her fear of violating the state’s extreme abortion law that makes it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 99 years in prison.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent with The Nation magazine, who talks about her recent article, “An Abortion Ban Killed Amber Thurman—and Likely Many More,” with a focus on how these deaths may carry political consequences in this year’s presidential and congressional election.
AMY LITTLEFIELD: Since Roe v Wade was overturned, a lot of us who follow this issue have been waiting, holding our breath, waiting to find out who are — as I put it in an article I wrote for The Nation last year — who our dead woman would be, the woman, the first person who we were going to learn had died as a result of an abortion ban post-Dobbs would be? And we know her name now.
And it’s Amber Nicole Thurman. And she was 28. She worked as a medical assistant. She had a 6-year-old boy. She loved to take him to petting zoos and the beach. And as was terribly predictable, you know, in a country where we know black women seek abortions at higher rates and also die far more commonly from maternal health complications.
She was a young black woman. And she died because doctors in Georgia did not perform a very simple routine procedure to remove tissue that she had retained in a rare complication after undergoing a medication abortion. And that was because the state of Georgia had made that routine procedure that would have saved her life a felony. There’s a six-week ban in Georgia, that, you know, makes medical providers afraid of committing a felony and going to prison for providing medical care.
And so, Amber Nicole Thurman had wanted a procedural abortion in Georgia. The state had a six-week ban. She had to travel four hours away to North Carolina. And because she hit traffic, she missed her appointment for the procedural abortion that she wanted. She had a medication abortion instead, which in the vast majority of cases is fine.
You know, she was well within the standard of care for that treatment. She suffered a rare complication, went to the hospital to have that complication treated. And again, that routine procedure that would have saved her was a felony in the state of Georgia. And so she died.
There’s two things that I want to point out about her death, right. One is that it was so entirely predictable that reproductive justice activists, including in the state of Georgia, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, have been screaming about how this is going to happen if you ban abortion at 6 weeks in the state with one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the country, you know, attorneys fighting this ban warned of this.
They were ignored. And so this is where we are, you know, with this little boy starting a new school year without his mom. The other thing that I want to point out about it is just how very rare it is that we can look at the death of a young woman of color in this country that has, you know, the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world, and pinpoint it and say it stemmed directly from this particular public policy. It rarely happens.
The New Yorker did a piece, you know, a while back about a young woman named Yeniifer Glick, a Latina woman in Texas who died, you know, from pregnancy-related circumstances. And it’s hard to draw a bright line and say the abortion ban killed someone. But what’s so remarkable in Amber Nicole Thurman’s case, ProPublica was able to pinpoint and say, Yes, she died from this abortion ban because the Maternal Mortality Review Committee in the state looked at her death and said it was preventable.
They ruled that it was preventable. And that should be an indictment of, you know, state policymakers in Georgia, of everyone involved who let this death that was entirely foreseeable and preventable happen.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Amy, we have an election coming up Nov. 5th with a lot at stake. In addition, there are 10 referendums across the country this November on abortion rights at the state level. Six states have already had abortion referendums, and they’ve all been won by the pro-choice side. What has been the response to this death of Amber Thurman by the Kamala Harris campaign?
And what would your advice be to the campaign to highlight this tragic death and what’s at stake for the country in terms of reproductive rights, when people go to the polls on Nov. 5?
AMY LITTLEFIELD: Yeah, I mean, Kamala Harris, you know, to her credit, has spoken even before this about the risks and harms posed by abortion bans. I know she met with Amber Thurman’s family and was on Oprah with them. You know, if I were her, I would go to Georgia. I would be in these women’s hometowns. I would be with their families, holding up photos of them, emphasizing that these deaths were preventable and laying them at the feet of Republican policymakers. And not just Donald Trump, right?
I mean, we have to remember, abortion is an issue that has been shaped almost entirely at the state level. I mean, especially now. But even before the Dobbs decision, when states like Georgia were chipping away at abortion access, it really depends on your state lawmakers, on your governor, on your attorney general. And so if I were Kamala Harris or if I were advising her, I would say, go to Georgia and maybe, you know, generating channeling that outrage in this state where these two vibrant young women have just died could help lead to changes down the ballot, right?
That might have a direct impact on the six-week ban in this state.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Amy Littlefield (17:18) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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