American women’s rights organizations were outraged Monday after the publication of an article by the media ProPublica on the death of a woman in Georgia, who died in hospital after not receiving the necessary care because of restrictive abortion laws.
Amber Thurman, 28, developed rare complications after taking the abortion pill to end her pregnancy. She died in August 2022. A state commission ruled her death was “preventable” because she waited too long to perform the surgery that could have saved her life.
A law had just been passed making the procedure — called a dilation and curettage (D&C) and aimed at emptying the uterus — a crime, except in rare cases. Doctors warned that the vague definition made the exceptions difficult to interpret.
“These devastating bans” have “delayed the vital routine care she needed,” Mini Timmaraju of the organization Reproductive Freedom for All said in a statement.
Amber Thurman “should be alive today,” added Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Deeply overhauled by Donald Trump, the American Supreme Court gave states back in 2022 the freedom to legislate locally on the issue — which has become one of the major themes of the November presidential election.
According to ProPublica, which has seen confidential documents, this is the first officially declared “preventable” abortion-related death in the United States.
Amber Thurman, who already had a baby boy and wanted to become a nurse, had to travel to North Carolina for an abortion because of Georgia’s ban after six weeks of pregnancy.
After taking the abortion pill (mifepristone and misoprostol), she started bleeding more than expected, and was taken to hospital.
Doctors found that she had not expelled all the fetal tissue and diagnosed “acute sepsis.”
But despite his rapidly deteriorating condition, the hospital waited 17 hours before performing the dilation and curettage procedure.
Amber Thurman died during surgery.
The commission said there was a “good chance” that a more rapid procedure would have saved his life.
The exceptions for danger to the mother’s life included in the abortion restrictions have been widely criticized as ineffective by doctors.
“She died in the hospital, surrounded by medical personnel who could have saved her life,” feminist author Jessica Valenti wrote on X. “This is the result of abortion bans.”
