Harris blames Trump for abortion-related death in Georgia: 'What we feared' | Roe v. Wade

Kamala Harris on Tuesday blamed Donald Trump's policies and condemned the states' abortion bans. It had previously been reported that a woman in the US state of Georgia had died because she was denied timely medical care due to the restrictive abortion ban in her state.

Harris' comments followed an investigation published Monday by ProPublica detailing the circumstances of the 2022 death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia physician's assistant. The newspaper called the case the first confirmed “preventable” abortion-related death and said it would name a second in the coming days.

“These are the consequences of Donald Trump's actions,” Harris said in a statement. Georgia's six-week abortion ban took effect shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022.

Thurman died after developing a rare complication from the abortion pills. A few days after taking the pills, she was admitted to the emergency room with severe bleeding because she had not yet passed all the fetal tissue from her body. According to the report, doctors dithered in their treatment and waited 20 hours to perform a routine procedure. Thurman, who was 28 and the mother of a six-year-old boy, died during emergency surgery.

“This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dream of going to nursing school,” said Harris, who has made abortion rights a major issue in her presidential campaign. “This is exactly what we feared would happen when Roe was overturned.”

In Georgia, abortion after six weeks of pregnancy is a crime. While the law provides exceptions to save a pregnant person's life, doctors say the wording is too vague to be practical.

Since 2022, more than 20 states have enacted abortion bans and restrictions.

After Thurman's death, a state medical review board concluded her death was “preventable” and there was a “good chance” she would have survived if she had undergone the procedure earlier, ProPublica reported.

ProPublica reported that Thurman became pregnant shortly after Georgia's six-week abortion ban went into effect and that her pregnancy had just passed that mark.

Thurman planned a procedure called dilation and curettage, or D&C, in North Carolina for Aug. 13 and traveled there with her best friend, ProPublica reported, after finding a babysitter and taking a day off from work.

But they encountered heavy traffic on the way, her best friend told ProPublica, and the clinic couldn't hold Thurman's spot for more than 15 minutes.

Thurman was then prescribed a two-pill medication abortion program approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that contained mifepristone and misoprostol because her pregnancy was well within the standard treatment regimen.

Medical abortion is the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the United States. Deaths from complications are extremely rare.

ProPublica reported that Thurman was given instructions at the North Carolina clinic on how to take the pills safely and was told to go to the emergency room if complications arose.

She took the first pill in the clinic, went home before any symptoms appeared, and took the second pill as prescribed the next day.

At first she only had cramps, but over the course of several days her condition worsened and she began vomiting and bleeding heavily.

If she had lived near the North Carolina clinic, she would have received a free D&C immediately after the exam, the manager there told ProPublica. But Thurman was about four hours away.

Thurman lost consciousness and was rushed to a suburban Atlanta hospital with a severe infection. Thurman needed a curettage, but the surgery was delayed for about 20 hours as her blood pressure dropped and her organs began to fail, ProPublica reports.

The report states that she was diagnosed with “acute severe sepsis” the next morning, but even then, no curettage was performed.

About 20 hours after she arrived at the hospital, the doctor performed the curettage and determined that a hysterectomy was also necessary. Thurman's heart stopped during the procedure.

The Georgia Maternal Mortality Committee concluded that Thurman's death could “probably” have been prevented if the curettage had been performed earlier.

Before her death, Thurman had planned to enroll in nursing school, her friend told ProPublica. She and her child had recently moved out of her family home and into their own apartment.

Thurman's last words to her mother before she died were, “Promise me you'll take care of my son,” the outlet reported.

Studies have shown that the availability of D&C abortion and miscarriage care reduced maternal mortality rates among women of color by as much as 40% in the year following the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973.

But since more than 20 states have passed abortion bans or restrictions in the last two years, women with medical complications have repeatedly been turned away from emergency rooms.

“Women are bleeding to death in parking lots, being turned away from emergency rooms, and losing their ability to ever have children again,” Harris' statement said. “Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot choose what happens to their bodies. And now women are dying.”

As president, Trump appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who were instrumental in overturning Roe. And as a candidate, he alternated between boasting about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade and complaining that Republican extremism on the issue could cost them the election.

“If Donald Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national ban on abortion, and these horrific realities will multiply,” Harris said. “We must pass a law to restore reproductive freedom. When I'm president of the United States, I will proudly sign it. Lives depend on it.”

Mini Timmaraju, The President of Naral Pro-Choice America, said in a press conference on Monday that Thurman's death “solid evidence for something we already knew – that abortion bans kill people and that things cannot continue like this.”

Regina Davis Moss, executive director of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda, said in a statement that what happened to Thurman was “completely preventable,” adding that this is the “post-Dobbs reality for many Black women, girls and gender-fluid people.”

Moss also pointed to a study that estimated that banning abortion in all states could lead to a “staggering” 39 percent increase in maternal mortality among black women.

Lauren Gambino contributed to this report