Kamala Harris blamed Donald Trump’s policies and condemned state abortion bans on Tuesday after it was reported that a woman in Georgia died after being denied timely medical care due to the state’s restrictive abortion ban.
Harris’s comments came on the heels of an investigation published by ProPublica on Monday, recounting the circumstances surrounding the 2022 death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a medical assistant from Georgia. The outlet called the case the first “preventable” abortion-related death to be confirmed, and said it would name a second in 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 she developed a rare complication from abortion pills. Days after taking the pills, she was taken to an emergency room with heavy bleeding, as she had not yet expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. Doctors waffled on her treatment, according to the report, waiting 20 hours to perform a routine procedure. Thurman, who was 28 years old and the mother of a six-year-old boy, died in emergency surgery.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, 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, performing an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy is a felony. While the law allows for exceptions to save a pregnant person’s life, doctors say its wording is too vague to be workable in practice.
Since 2022, more than 20 states have enacted abortion bans and restrictions.
After Thurman’s death, a state medical review committee deemed that her death was “preventable”, and that there was a “good chance” she would have survived if she had received the procedure earlier, according to ProPublica.
ProPublica reported that Thurman became pregnant shortly after Georgia’s six-week abortion ban took effect and that her pregnancy had just passed that mark.
Thurman scheduled a procedure known as dilation and curettage, or D&C, in North Carolina for 13 August and journeyed there with her best friend, ProPublica reported, after finding a babysitter and scheduling a day off work.
However, they encountered heavy traffic on the drive, her best friend told ProPublica, and the clinic could not hold Thurman’s spot longer 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, as her pregnancy was well within the standard of care for that treatment.
Abortion using medication is the most common way to end a pregnancy in the US, and deaths from complications are extremely rare.
ProPublica reported that at the clinic in North Carolina, Thurman received instructions on how to safely take the pills and was told to go to the emergency room if complications developed.
She took the first pill at the clinic and drove home before any symptoms started and took the second pill the next day, as directed.
Initially, she only experienced cramping, but her condition worsened over several days with vomiting and heavy bleeding.
If she had lived near the North Carolina clinic, she would have received a D&C for free as soon as she followed up, the executive director there 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 around 20 hours as her blood pressure sank and her organs started to fail, according to ProPublica.
The report states that she was diagnosed with “acute severe sepsis” the following morning. However, even then, a D&C was not performed.
Around 20 hours after she arrived at the hospital, the doctor conducted the D&C and discovered that a hysterectomy was also necessary. Thurman’s heart stopped during the procedure.
The maternal mortality review committee in Georgia determined that there was a “good chance” that Thurman’s death could likely have been prevented if the D&C had been provided earlier.
Before her death, Thurman had been planning to enroll in nursing school, her friend told ProPublica. She and her child 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 have shown that the availability of the D&C procedure for abortions and miscarriage care in the year after Roe v Wade was passed in 1973 reduced the rate of maternal deaths for women of color by up to 40%.
But since more than 20 states enacted abortion bans or restrictions in the last two years, women in with medical complications have been repeatedly 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 statement said. “Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying.”
As president, Trump appointed three conservative supreme court justices who were decisive in overturning Roe. And as a candidate, he has alternately bragged about his role in overturning Roe v Wade, and also complained that Republican extremism on the issue could cost them the election.
“If Donald Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban, and these horrific 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, the president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said in a press call on Monday that Thurman’s death “substantiated proof of something we already knew – that abortion bans kill people and it cannot go on”.
Regina Davis Moss, the CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, said in a statement that what happened to Thurman was “entirely preventable” adding that this is the “post-Dobbs reality for many Black women, girls, gender expansive people”.
Moss also noted a study that estimated that if abortions ban were in every state, there could be a “staggering” 39% increase in maternal deaths for Black women.
Lauren Gambino contributed to this report
