A Georgia woman died after doctors allegedly delayed a life-saving procedure due to the state’s restrictive abortion ban.
Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old medical assistant, died after Georgia doctors delayed a routine dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure, ProPublica reported on Monday.
Thurman found out she was pregnant in the summer of 2022 with twins and decided to get an abortion to preserve the stability of her family. She was already the single mother of a 6-year-old boy and had just moved out of the family home. She also had plans to got to nursing school, her best friend Ricaria Baker told ProPublica.
In the summer of 2022, The Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, went into effect in Georgia after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The law bans most abortions once fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually after about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant.
Thurman found out she was pregnant at nine weeks, so outside the allowed period for an abortion in the state.
She decided to travel to North Carolina for a surgical abortion, but on the morning of the procedure Thurman and Baker hit traffic and the clinic refused to hold their spot for longer than 15 minutes. As a result, Thurman was given a medication abortion instead with mifepristone and misoprostol.
Over the next several days Thurman experienced cramping, vomiting, heavy bleeding and loss of consciousness. She was rushed to Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Georgia. Doctors discovered that Thurman had a rare complication where she didn’t expel all the fetal tissue.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, if fetal tissue remains in the uterus, it can cause “infection, which can damage your reproductive organs or even cause dangerous complications like sepsis when left untreated.”
At this stage, a routine D&C is usually done to remove fetal tissue from the uterus but, Georgia’s abortion law made the procedure a felony offense and even though there are exceptions the law’s language is vague.
For nearly 20 hours, doctors gathered information and gave Thurman medication even as her condition deteriorated.
By the time Thurman was taken to an OR she not only needed a D&C, but an hysterectomy as well. She died during the procedure.
Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee, reportedly concluded that there was a “good chance” that Thurman’s death could have been prevented if doctors had performed the D&C earlier.
More than 20 states have passed restrictive abortion legislation since the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Vice-President Kamala Harris blamed Donald Trump for Thurman’s death saying it is “exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down.”
“In more than 20 states, Trump Abortion Bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care,” she continued. “Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
Trump appointed the three justices that gave the conservatives a supermajority on the high court to overturn Roe, a fact he brags about on the campaign trail.
