Georgia Woman's Death Marks First Confirmed Case of Fatal Post-Roe Abortion Denial

Reproductive rights advocates have warned for years that abortion bans and restrictions like those now in place in 22 U.S. states would kill pregnant people, and have been dismissed as "hyperbolic" by right-wing lawmakers and activists.

On Monday, new reporting shed light for the first time on the case of one woman whose "preventable" death was the result of an abortion ban—and as ProPublica reported, "there are almost certainly others."

The outlet reported on the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old mother of a six-year-old son in Georgia, who realized she was pregnant in July 2022—weeks after the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and just as the state's six-week abortion ban was going into effect.

Thurman had just passed the six-week mark in her pregnancy as the ban took effect on July 20, with "exceptions" that Republicans claimed would allow doctors to provide care to pregnant people who were facing life-threatening complications.

Unable to get an abortion in her home state, the medical assistant, who was planning to attend nursing school and had recently been able to move out of her family's home into an apartment with her son, scheduled a dilation and curettage (D&C)—a surgical abortion procedure—at a clinic in North Carolina, about four hours away. Scheduling the appointment required taking the day off work, finding childcare, and borrowing a relative's car.

Thurman hit heavy traffic on the way to the clinic and missed her appointment; with abortion bans going into effect across the Southeast, the facility was overwhelmed with out-of-state patients and was unable to schedule another D&C for her.

Instead, she was prescribed the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone, and took the first pill before heading back home with plans to take the second in Georgia.

After taking the second pill, however, Thurman experienced a rare complication, with some of the fetal tissue remaining in her uterus.

Before Georgia's abortion ban went into effect, she would have been able to obtain a D&C, with doctors removing the remaining tissue—a fairly routine procedure, and part of the standard care for a miscarriage.

As ProPublica reported, the year after the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, affirming that abortion care was a constitutional right in the U.S., the new availability of D&Cs for abortion and miscarriages slashed the maternal mortality rate for women of color by up to 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 roughly 20 hours.

ProPublica noted that the "supposed 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 told the doctors that she had had a medication abortion, which Republican state lawmakers hadn't included in the exceptions—suggesting she shouldn't be provided care since she'd chosen to terminate her pregnancy. Violating the law could result in prosecution and a prison sentence of up to a decade for a doctor.

The morning after Thurman arrived at the hospital at around 9:30 pm on August 18, 2022, with an ultrasound showing fetal tissue remaining in Thurman's body, a doctor diagnosed "acute severe sepsis," but it was still 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 explained to 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, which includes 10 physicians, determined that the hospital's decision to delay providing care for nearly an entire day had a "large" impact on Thurman's "preventable" death.

ProPublica identified one other Georgia woman whose death was caused by delayed abortion care resulting from the state's ban, and plans to report on her story in the coming days.

"This is what abortion bans do," said writer and activist Jessica Valenti.

At The New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote that "it was only a matter of time" before Americans would learn that an abortion ban had killed a pregnant person.

"The shattering fallout from abortion prohibition was entirely predictable for anyone who has paid attention to such bans in other countries," Goldberg wrote, citing 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 be one here."

On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, addressed Thurman's story, saying 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 finding 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 calling the outlet's reporting a "fear-mongering campaign."

But Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of progressive advocacy group Indivisible, said Thurman 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."