Doctors are responsible for Amber Thurman's death

The family of a Georgia woman who died after she was allegedly denied an emergency abortion for 20 hours plans to sue the hospital, her attorney announced Tuesday.

Noted civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump held a press conference in which he accused doctors at Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Georgia, of not acting quickly enough to save Amber Thurman's life in 2022.

According to Thurman's family and a report from ProPublica last month, Thurman – a 28-year-old mother of one – suffered a rare complication from abortion pills that did not remove all of the fetal tissue from her body. She went to a hospital because she needed a routine procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C), but doctors reportedly waited almost a full day to operate. Thurman died during surgery.

In the intervening hours, Thurman's infection spread, her blood pressure dropped and her organs began to fail, according to ProPublica. Her family said she was suffering before the operation, vomiting and turning blue.

A state panel that reviews pregnancy-related deaths deemed Thurman's death preventable and said the hospital's delay in performing the procedure had a major impact on her death, ProPublica reported.

Her case was the first known abortion-related death since the Supreme Court struck down the nation's right to abortion more than two years ago. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has invoked Thurman's case and attacked Republicans for trying to overturn Roe v. Wade and pass state abortion bans.

Georgia banned abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, except in cases of medical emergencies, pregnancies where the unborn child is unlikely to survive, rape or incest. A judge struck down the ban on Monday, saying it violated the state constitution, although the case is likely to end up in the state Supreme Court.

Abortion rights advocates have argued that such bans are often vague and doctors are reluctant to perform emergency abortions for fear of prosecution.

But Crump blamed doctors, not the law, for Thurman's death.

“Even under Georgia law, doctors had a duty to act to save Amber,” he said. “She had taken the abortion pills and there were tissues left. There was no viable fetus or anything else that would have prevented her from saving her life while she suffered.

“They have a duty to stabilize her and then give her the opportunity to go to another hospital facility,” Crump said. “But you can’t let her suffer and die in your hospital bed if the death is preventable.”

Piedmont Healthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Spectrum News.

Thurman's family said doctors left them in the dark about her condition while she waited at the hospital. Her mother, Shanette Williams, said she would have sought medical care elsewhere if she had known doctors were waiting to perform a D&C.

“We would have done anything if we had known, but we didn’t,” Williams said. “We didn't have a chance to find out.

“It's so disheartening. It's heartbreaking. It’s disturbing,” she added. “Every emotion you could imagine from a mother, I had.”

Thurman had a son who was 6 when she died.

“My little nephew [is] asked, 'Why did they take my best friend?'” said Thurman's sister, CJ Williams. “…Basically traumatized because his mother, his best friend, someone he was with every day, is gone.”

Crump also called for a law to be named after Thurman that would prevent similar deaths, as well as a congressional hearing on Thurman's case.

Monday's court ruling was of little consolation to Thurman's family. Crump said a relative remarked to him that “it's like getting a pardon from death row two years late.”

Her sister added: “I would hate for this to happen to another mother, daughter or cousin but Amber is gone. Did she really have to be the victim?”