Two Georgia Moms Are First Women to Die From Abortion Bans

Story originally posted here.

Amber Thurman was a beautiful 28 year -old single mom in Atlanta with a beaming smile and an adorable 6 year – old son. She was a medical assistant with big plans to become a nurse.

But on Aug 20, 2022 she was dead, her uterus ravaged by a sepsis infection from an incomplete abortion. For 20 hours doctors at an Atlanta hospital delayed providing her with a life-saving D & C procedure. By the time surgeons got her into the operating room, they were racing to try to save her life.

Just two weeks before that, Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp had. signed the state’s new “Heartbeat” abortion ban into law and announced that he was “overjoyed” that the ban would keep Georgian women “safe” and “healthy.”

Abortions could no longer be practiced in the state after a fetal heartbeat was detected, usually around 6 weeks, unless a woman was a victim of rape or incest or at risk of dying. The criminal penalty for medical providers who didn’t adhere to the strict guidelines was up to 10 years in prison and the revocation of their medical licenses.

The result for for Amber who arrived by ambulance after vomiting up blood and passing out at home, was that she didn’t didn’t quickly receive what had just recently been a routine D & C to clear her uterus. Her case was now a frightening hot potato for the doctors at the hospital.

Was she close enough to death to meet the new law’s requirement when her white blood count and her blood pressure fell dangerously low? How about when antibiotics weren’t enough to curb her “acute sepsis’ infection? Or when she became at risk for bleeding out? Or when her vital organs began to fail?

When was she close enough to death to qualify for a legal abortion under Georgia’s ban?

By the time, the hospital physicians believed they were meeting the new law’s standard, Amber died on the operating table.

This loving young mother tragically became the first known American woman to die from a Trump abortion ban less than two months after Roe V Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022 by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

It only took two months.

However, her “preventable” death has just now became public more than two years later, when the ProPublica news outlet published the news after they obtained a report from the official Georgia state committee which investigates maternal deaths.

The committee which reports to the state’s Department of Health conducted a two year examination of the circumstances of Amber’s death which followed a rare complication from her two pill abortion medication regime.

She received the pills when she drove to a North Carolina clinic four hours away, where abortion was still legal. Only 32 deaths have been linked to medication abortion pills between 2000 and 2022 and almost 6,000,000 American women have used them. They are considered safer than Viagra.

Unfortunately in Amber’s case, the pills failed to expel all the fetal contents from her uterus. It’s because the young woman didn’t receive the known standard of care – the D & C – quickly for her dire condition that the committee ruled that her death was “preventable.”

Now make no mistake – this is what America’s women and those who love them must accept. Abortions bans cause young, healthy women to die. Death is now a risk for ANY pregnancy in the 22 states which have enacted the Trump bans.

And if the former president is re-elected on Nov 5, death will be a chance that every woman of reproductive age will take in America every time she decides to get pregnant or accidentally becomes pregnant.

That’s because Donald Trump – no matter how many times he tries to confuse you about his stance on abortion WILL end it nationally, just as his Christian nationalist and Evangelical followers have demanded.

You must have noticed how Trump is proudly crowing that HE’s The One who was able to “kill Rose V Wade” after 50 years. HE’s the one who appointed the three ultra right ring judges that he knew would do it. He promised to do it and he did!

If Trump and ‘pro life’ zealot JD Vance are elected, abortion in America is over.

If the pair can do it legislatively they will. If not, they’ll follow their Project 2025’ handbook and ‘backdoor’ their ban. Their compliant Justice Department will enforce the 1873 Comstock Act, preventing the transportation of any abortion medications or surgical equipment across state lines.

Then on top of that, Trump’s obedient appointed FDA chief will withdraw the abortions pills as well as several forms of popular birth control from the market.

Done.

Women like Amber and Texans Amanda Zurawski, Kate Cox, Dr. Austin Dennard and Madysyn Anderson, Tennessean Allie Phillips and Floridian Anya Cook and millions of women in the 22 Trump abortion ban states already know what it’s like to have no right to make decisions about their bodies.

They’ve have been forced to flee to other states for abortions of unviable babies to save their own lives. They’ve lost their fertility after sepsis ravaged their reproductive organs when their water broke at 18 weeks. They’ve been left to bleed out in public restrooms after miscarriages until they were close enough to death for doctors to legally treat them .

Meanwhile in Amber’s sate of Georgia, OBGYNs are practicing “under an element of fear”, Dr. Didi Saint Louis, an Atlanta OBGYN confirms to me. “You don’t know what situation you might encounter that could land you in jail or cause you to lose your medical license.”

“I shouldn’t have to be fearing that I will go to jail when I’m treating patients. I can see why women would be afraid to seek care and to be honest about their situations so we can treat them as effectively as possible,” says the doctor, who has been practicing for more than 20 years. “Some women don’t know what the law is. It’s confusing.”

She stresses that since Georgia’s abortion ban was enacted, doctors feel like “we have our hands tied behind our backs.” And while she doesn’t understand why the hospital and doctor who treated Amber delayed urgent care for so long, she explains that after the law was enacted “we were uncertain and confused about how to interpret the law and how we could provide care.”

“We were scrambling to understand it.”

She says the abortion ban adds delays to the care of patients with complications, miscarriages, incomplete abortions and other conditions which require consultations with hospital leadership, risk managers and lawyers before proceeding.

“Sometimes it makes it difficult to practice medicine,” in Georgia admits the doctor who is a member of the Committee to Protect Health Care’s National Reproductive Freedom Task Force.

And sometimes she has to tell pregnant patients will serious health risks that they may have to leave the state to get an abortion.’

Atlanta mom of three, 41, Candi Miller, didn’t leave the state when she accidentally got pregnant again. She suffered from debilitating lupus, diabetes and hypertension. To save her life, she ordered abortion pills online but like Amber she tragically didn’t expel all the fetal tissue from her uterus.

When the excruciating pain set in from an infection she was too terrified by the state’s new abortion ban to see a doctor. She suffered for days taking strong painkillers until on Nov 12, her husband found her dead in her bed, next to her 3 year-old daughter.

An autopsy ruled that her death was caused by the combination of painkillers she consumed as she suffered.

Her son told ProPublica that the family believes she could have gotten “jail time “ if she was caught “trying to do anything to get rid of the baby.”

JD Vance just told a rally that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe V Wade was a “victory” and that “the Republican party is proud to be the ‘pro life’ and ‘pro family’ party.

Tell that to Amber and Candi’s children who lost their mothers.

When it takes two years to investigate the deaths of pregnant women, we should be prepared – how many American women have already died?

Donald Trump asked his followers at a Long Island, NY rally on Sept 18, “What the hell do you have to lose?” if you vote for him.

If you’re a woman of reproductive age, the answer is clear: It could be your life.