Amber Thurman is the first “preventable” abortion death since the ban

A Georgia woman died after failing to receive timely medical attention due to the state's restrictive abortion laws, investigative journalism website ProPublica reports.

Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, experienced a rare complication after taking abortion pills and died during emergency surgery in August 2022, according to medical reports obtained by the website.

Newsweek has emailed the hospital where she died for comment.

According to ProPublica, this is the first case of an abortion-related death deemed “preventable” by an official state committee that has been made public. The newspaper said it would soon publish details of a second case.

Georgia's state law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy (the so-called LIFE Act) went into effect on July 20, 2022. Thurman's pregnancy had recently passed that mark when she learned of her pregnancy, according to documents obtained by ProPublica.

The new law also criminalized the performance of dilation and curettage (D&C), the removal of tissue from the uterus after an abortion or miscarriage, with medical exceptions. However, doctors had warned that the law's wording was too vague.

Thurman discovered she was pregnant with twins in the summer of 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling. Roe v. Wadewhich has now led to bans and restrictions on abortion in 22 states.

The otherwise healthy physician's assistant and single mother of a 6-year-old boy chose the abortion to maintain her family's stability, according to her best friend Ricaria Baker. She had moved out of her family home into a gated apartment complex and planned to enroll in nursing school.

Thurman had wanted a surgical abortion in her home state and hoped that the Georgia ban would be overturned in court. However, in the ninth week, she went to a clinic in North Carolina.

On the day of her appointment, Baker said, there was a traffic jam and the clinic could not hold her appointment for more than 15 minutes. Instead, Thurman was given a medical abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol, a regimen approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Medication abortion is the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the United States. Deaths due to complications are extremely rare: As of 2022, only 32 deaths out of nearly 6 million women who terminated a pregnancy with mifepristone had been reported to the FDA – regardless of whether the drug played a role or not.

After taking the pills, Thurman suffered from convulsions, but her condition worsened over the course of several days with vomiting and severe bleeding, the report said.

She was taken to Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Georgia, on the evening of August 18, where doctors determined that she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body.

The next morning, she was diagnosed with “acute severe sepsis,” but even then, no curettage was performed. ProPublica reported that doctors continued to gather information and administer medications rather than perform the procedure, even though Thurman was breathing rapidly and was in danger of bleeding to death.

At 12:05 that day, more than 17 hours after Thurman arrived at the hospital, a critical care physician told the gynecologist that her condition was worsening. She was taken to the operating room two hours later.

At this point, the situation was so bad that open abdominal surgery was required. The doctor performed the curettage and determined that a hysterectomy was also necessary. During the procedure, Thurman's heart stopped.

The ten-member committee investigating maternal mortality in the US state of Georgia concluded that Thurman's death could “probably” have been prevented if the curettage had been performed earlier.

While official reports on individual patient cases are not made public, ProPublica said it had received reports confirming that at least one other woman had died because she did not have access to legal abortions and timely medical care in her state. There are almost certainly more, it said.

An Atlanta judge later blocked Georgia's revised abortion law, but the state Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that it could remain in place. The law allows abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in cases of rape and incest, and when they are necessary to prevent a patient's death or significant physical impairment of a major bodily function.

Kamala Harris: “Eexactly what we feared'

22 states have banned or restricted abortion since Roe v. Wade was repealed in June 2022. Since then, voters in seven states – California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont – have sided with abortion rights advocates on ballot proposals.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who campaigned on abortion rights, responded to ProPublica's report by saying Thurman's case was “exactly what we feared when Roe was overturned” and blamed her opponent, former President Donald Trump.

“This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dream of going to nursing school,” she said.

“In more than 20 states, Trump's abortion bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care. Women are bleeding to death in parking lots, being turned away from emergency rooms, and losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they can't choose what happens to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump's actions.”

Harris said she wants to pass legislation to “restore reproductive freedom” while Trump seeks a national ban on abortion. She warned that “these horrific realities will multiply” if he wins the presidential election in November.

Trump announced in April that he wanted to leave abortion legislation to the individual states.

Reproductive rights advocacy groups also expressed outrage after ProPublica's report was released on Monday.

“Amber would be alive now if it weren’t for Donald Trump & [Georgia Governor] Brian Kemp's abortion ban,” wrote Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, on X. “They have blood on their hands.”

Pregnancy Justice wrote on X: “This is absolutely devastating. Amber Thurman waited 20 hours for doctors to finally operate on her because her infection was spreading, her blood pressure was dropping, and her organs were failing. But by then it was too late. If she had gotten help in time, she would still be here. Abortion bans are killing people.”

Garrison Douglas, a spokesman for Kemp, said in a statement to Newsweek: “It is clear that dangerous misinformation puts patients’ lives at risk, which is why it is crucial to get the facts right.

“Georgia's LIFE Act not only expanded support for expectant mothers, but also created clear exceptions, including providing necessary care in the event of a medical emergency. In Georgia, we will always fight for and protect the lives of the most vulnerable among us.”

Update 9/17/24, 8:45 a.m. ET: Added a statement from Kamala Harris.

Update 9/17/24, 9:25 a.m. ET: Added a statement from Garrison Douglas.

Update 9/17/24, 9:53 a.m. ET: Added additional context on abortion legislation.