Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump’s policies and condemned the state’s abortion ban on Tuesday, after it was reported that a woman in Georgia died after being denied timely medical care due to the restrictive ban on abortion the abortion of the state.
Harris’ comments came in the wake of an investigation published by ProPublica on Monday, recounting the circumstances surrounding the 2022 death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia physician assistant. The outlet called the case the first “preventable” abortion-related death to be confirmed, and said it would call for 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 went into effect shortly after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.
Thurman died after developing a rare complication from the abortive pills. Days after taking the pills, she was brought to an emergency room with heavy bleeding, as she had not yet expelled all the fetal tissue from her body. According to the report, the doctors were waiting on his treatment, waiting 20 hours to perform a routine procedure. Thurman, who was 28 and the mother of a six-year-old boy, died in emergency surgery.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her child, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” said Harris, who has made abortion rights a prominent feature of her presidential campaign. “This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down.”
In Georgia, having an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy is a crime. While the law allows exceptions to save a pregnant person’s life, doctors say its wording is too vague to be workable in practice.
As of 2022, more than 20 states have enacted abortion bans and restrictions.
After Thurman’s death, a state medical review committee deemed her death “preventable,” and that there was a “good chance” she would have survived if she had received the procedure sooner, according to ProPublica.
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 on August 13 and traveled there with her best friend, ProPublica reported, after finding a babysitter and planning a day of work.
However, they encountered heavy traffic on the road, her best friend told ProPublica, and the clinic could not keep Thurman’s location for more than 15 minutes.
As a result, Thurman was given a two-pill medication abortion regimen approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, which included mifepristone and misoprostol, since her pregnancy was well within the standard of care for that treatment.
Abortion with medication is most common way to terminate a pregnancy in the United States, and deaths from complications are very rare.
ProPublica reported that at the clinic in North Carolina, Thurman received instructions on how to take the pills safely and was told to go to the emergency room if complications developed.
He took the first pill at the clinic and drove home before the symptoms started and took the second pill the next day as directed.
Initially, he only had cramping, but his condition worsened over several days with vomiting and heavy bleeding.
If she had lived near the North Carolina clinic, she would have received a free D&C as soon as she followed through, the executive director told ProPublica. But Thurman was about four hours away.
Thurman passed out and was taken to a hospital in suburban Atlanta with a severe infection. Thurman needed a D&C, but the operation was delayed for about 20 hours as her blood pressure plummeted and her organs began to fail, according to ProPublica.
The report says she was diagnosed with “severe acute sepsis” the next morning. However, even then, a D&C was not performed.
About 20 hours after she arrived at the hospital, the doctor performed the D&C and discovered that a hysterectomy was also required. Thurman’s heart stopped during the procedure.
Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee determined there was a “good chance” Thurman’s death could have been prevented if the D&C had been provided earlier.
Before her death, Thurman had planned to enroll in nursing school, her friend told ProPublica. She and her son had recently moved out of her family’s place 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 they showed that the availability of the D&C procedure for abortion and abortion care in the year after Roe v Wade was passed in 1973 reduced the maternal death rate for women of color until to 40%.
But since more than 20 states have enacted abortion bans or restrictions in the past two years, women with medical complications have repeatedly been turned away from emergency rooms.
“Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again,” Harris said. “Survivors of rape and incest are told they can’t make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying.”
As president, Trump appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who ruled to overturn Roe. And as a candidate, he alternately bragged about his role in overturning Roe v Wade, and also complained that Republican extremism on the issue could cost him the election.
“If Donald Trump has the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban, and these terrible realities will multiply,” Harris said. “We must pass a law to restore reproductive freedom. When I am president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. Lives depend on it.”
Mini Timmaraju, him president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said in a press call on Monday that Thurman’s death “proven proof of something we already know – that the abortion ban is killing people and it can’t go away.”
Regina Davis Moss, CEO 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, gender-expansive people.”
Moss too noted a study who estimated that if abortion were banned in every state, there could be an “incredible” 39% increase in maternal deaths for black women.
Lauren Gambino contributed to this report