There are other names, but this is the one we know: Amber Thurman has become the first woman whose death was preventable in relation to an abortion ban since Dobbs. Her name and story have become public as reporting by ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana details how Thurman, a Black 28-year-old mother to a young son who had dreams of becoming a nurse, died a painful, preventable death in Georgia after doctors at a hospital there refused to perform a simple procedure that could have saved her life – because the law did not allow them.
The story highlights the reality of abortion bans, which – even in states like Georgia, with putative exceptions for maternal health – in practice impose death sentences on women who seek to end their pregnancies, or who experience severe complications. They force doctors to choose between medical best practices and their own legal protection – and in the process, the lives of women are treated as alarmingly disposable.
Thurman, who lived in Georgia, died just weeks after her state’s abortion ban went into effect. She had just established a new degree of stability for herself and her young son when she discovered that she was pregnant with twins in 2022. As her pregnancy had already progressed beyond her state’s gestational limit, she took a road trip to North Carolina with her best friend, where a clinic gave her abortion pills. Abortion pills have very low rates of complications but rare problems do occur. In Thurman’s case, not all of the pregnancy tissue had been expelled from her uterus, and she arrived in a Georgia ER with bleeding, pain and falling blood pressure – the telltale signs of an infection.
Thurman could have been cured with a D&C, or dilation and curettage, a procedure in which the cervix is dilated to create an opening through which instruments can be inserted to empty out the contents of a uterus. The procedure is a popular form of abortion, but it is also a routine part of miscarriage and other gynecological care. If the tissue was promptly removed, she probably would have been fine: a D&C requires no special equipment and takes only about 15 minutes.
But Georgia’s abortion ban outlawed the D&C procedure, making it a felony to perform except in cases of managing a “spontaneous” or “naturally occurring” miscarriage. Because Thurman had taken abortion pills, her miscarriage was illegal to treat. She suffered in a hospital bed for 20 hours, developing sepsis and beginning to experience organ failure. By the time the Georgia doctors were finally willing to treat her, it was too late.
We don’t know how many other women have died because of abortion bans. Such cases are often shrouded in secrecy, stigma and confidentiality. And few families, let alone those grieving the loss of vibrant, loving young women, are willing to subject themselves to the smears and scrutiny that coming forward about abortion ban deaths will inevitably entail.
But we will also not know because ban states, where these deaths are taking place, are not incentivized to reveal them. Thurman’s death was ruled preventable by a state maternal mortality review board. But it was only ProPublica’s reporting that made the cause of her death public. Not even her family were told that Amber could have been saved: the state did not bother to inform them, and they learned from ProPublica’s reporter.
But even if we knew all the names of those who have been killed by abortion bans, we would still not be able to fathom the full scope of what has been taken from us. Every life – every woman’s life – is a world of possibility: these murders-by-neglect to which the law sentences women like Amber exterminate those worlds.
Amber will never live her dream of going to nursing school. Her best friend, Ricaria Baker, who drove her to the North Carolina clinic, will never laugh with her again. Her mother has lost a child. Her son, who was six when Thurman died, will grow up without his mother: she will never get to know the man he becomes, and he will never get to understand her as an adult.
All because the self-interest of cynical Republican politicians, the treacly, misogynist sentimentality of the anti-choice movement, and the myopic bigotry of six supreme court justices – Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts – were deemed more important than her life, her dreams, her ambitions and all the love her family had for her.
We do know that there almost certainly are other women like Thurman. We may well never know their stories, their names. But we know that we are worse off without them; we know that they deserved better; we know that their lives mattered – more than politics and more than other people’s religion. We can pray for those who loved them, and we can fight for those that will come next. And we can hope, too, that Amber Thurman’s face will haunt the nightmares of those who are responsible. I know she will haunt mine.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
