Opinion | It Was Only a Matter of Time Before Abortion Bans Killed Someone
Posted on 09/17/2024
It was inevitable, once Roe v. Wade was overturned and states started banning abortion, that women were going to die. Over the last two years, we?ve learned of countless close calls. In Oklahoma, 25-year-old Jaci Statton, sick and bleeding with a nonviable partial molar pregnancy, said medical staff told her to wait in a parking lot until she was ?crashing? or on the verge of a heart attack. In Florida, Anya Cook was sent home from the hospital after her membranes ruptured at 16 weeks; she then nearly bled to death in the bathroom of a hair salon. Women in Texas and Louisiana have been denied treatment for life-threatening ectopic pregnancies.
And now ProPublica has identified at least two women who died ?after they couldn?t access legal abortions and timely medical care.? According to ProPublica?s Kavitha Surana, ?There are almost certainly others.?
On Monday, thanks to Surana, we learned the story of one of those women, Amber Nicole Thurman, an otherwise healthy 28-year-old medical assistant from Georgia with a 6-year-old son. In 2022, Thurman and her child had just moved out of her family?s place and into their own apartment, and she was planning to start nursing school. When she found out she was pregnant with twins, her best friend told ProPublica, she felt she needed an abortion to preserve her newfound stability, but Georgia had enacted a 6-week abortion ban, and she?d just passed the deadline.
She waited, hoping the law would be put on hold, but eventually she arranged babysitting, took time off from work and borrowed a car in order to get a surgical abortion in North Carolina. Though she and her best friend woke up at 4 a.m. for the drive, they hit terrible traffic on their way there. ?The clinic couldn?t hold Thurman?s spot longer than 15 minutes ? it was inundated with women from other states where bans had taken effect,? wrote Surana. It offered her a medication abortion instead.
Medication abortion is usually safe and effective, but in about 3 percent to 5 percent of cases, women end up needing either another dose of misoprostol, one of the two drugs in the regimen, or surgery. That?s what happened to Thurman. Days after taking her second pill, she was in pain and bleeding heavily. The clinic in North Carolina would have offered her free follow-up care, but it was too far away.
Eventually, suffering a severe infection, she passed out and ended up in a hospital in suburban Atlanta. She needed a D.&C., a procedure to empty the uterus, but doctors waited 20 hours to operate as her blood pressure sank, and her organs began to fail. According to Surana, Thurman?s last words to her mother were, ?Promise me you?ll take care of my son.? A state medical review committee ruled her death ?preventable.?
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And now ProPublica has identified at least two women who died ?after they couldn?t access legal abortions and timely medical care.? According to ProPublica?s Kavitha Surana, ?There are almost certainly others.?
On Monday, thanks to Surana, we learned the story of one of those women, Amber Nicole Thurman, an otherwise healthy 28-year-old medical assistant from Georgia with a 6-year-old son. In 2022, Thurman and her child had just moved out of her family?s place and into their own apartment, and she was planning to start nursing school. When she found out she was pregnant with twins, her best friend told ProPublica, she felt she needed an abortion to preserve her newfound stability, but Georgia had enacted a 6-week abortion ban, and she?d just passed the deadline.
She waited, hoping the law would be put on hold, but eventually she arranged babysitting, took time off from work and borrowed a car in order to get a surgical abortion in North Carolina. Though she and her best friend woke up at 4 a.m. for the drive, they hit terrible traffic on their way there. ?The clinic couldn?t hold Thurman?s spot longer than 15 minutes ? it was inundated with women from other states where bans had taken effect,? wrote Surana. It offered her a medication abortion instead.
Medication abortion is usually safe and effective, but in about 3 percent to 5 percent of cases, women end up needing either another dose of misoprostol, one of the two drugs in the regimen, or surgery. That?s what happened to Thurman. Days after taking her second pill, she was in pain and bleeding heavily. The clinic in North Carolina would have offered her free follow-up care, but it was too far away.
Eventually, suffering a severe infection, she passed out and ended up in a hospital in suburban Atlanta. She needed a D.&C., a procedure to empty the uterus, but doctors waited 20 hours to operate as her blood pressure sank, and her organs began to fail. According to Surana, Thurman?s last words to her mother were, ?Promise me you?ll take care of my son.? A state medical review committee ruled her death ?preventable.?
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