According to an article published on Monday, September 16 by the media ProPublicaA woman died in a US hospital in August 2022 due to delays in care caused by restrictive abortion laws in the state of Georgia.
A law had just been passed making this procedure, called dilation and curettage (D&C), which is meant to empty the uterus, a crime, with rare exceptions. Doctors had warned that the vague definition of exceptions made them difficult to interpret.
Amber Thurman, 28, was admitted to a hospital near Atlanta after developing rare complications from taking the abortion pill to end her pregnancy. The physician assistant, mother of a 6-year-old boy, had initially made an appointment at a facility in neighboring North Carolina, four hours from her home, to undergo an abortion because of Georgia’s ban after six weeks of pregnancy. There, the facility, overwhelmed with abortion requests from women in other states, offered her an alternative treatment, the abortion pill (mifepristone and misoprostol).
Back home in Georgia, she began bleeding more than usual and was taken to the hospital. Doctors discovered that she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue and diagnosed a “acute sepsis”But despite her rapidly deteriorating health, the hospital, faced with vaguely defined restrictions on the procedure, waited seventeen hours before performing the dilation and curettage procedure. Amber Thurman died during surgery.
Amber Thurman ‘should be alive today’
According to an official commission from Georgia, there were “good luck” that a procedure performed more quickly would save his life. According to ProPublicawho consulted confidential documents, this is the first officially declared death “avoidable” linked to an abortion in the United States.
Deeply reformed by Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court in 2022 gave states the freedom to legislate locally on an issue that has become one of the main themes of the presidential elections in November. The exceptions for danger to the life of the mother included in abortion restrictions have been widely criticized by doctors as being ineffective.
American women’s rights organizations were outraged after the publication of an article describing the fate of Amber Thurman. “These devastating prohibitions” have “delayed the routine care he needed to save his life”“This is a very serious issue,” said Mini Timmaraju of the organization Reproductive Freedom for All in a press release. Ambar Thurman “I should be alive today”added Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“She died in the hospital, surrounded by medical personnel who could have saved her life”wrote feminist author Jessica Valenti in X. “This is the result of abortion bans”condemned.
