Amber Nicole Thurman’s death from an infection in 2022 is believed to be the first confirmed maternal fatality linked to post-Roe bans.
Reproductive justice advocates have been warning for more than two years that the end of Roe v. Wade would lead to surge in maternal mortality among patients denied abortion care—and that the increase was likely to be greatest among low-income women of color. Now, a new report by ProPublica has uncovered the first such verified death. A 28-year-old medical assistant and Black single mother in Georgia died from a severe infection after a hospital delayed a routine medical procedure that had been outlawed under that state’s six-week abortion ban.
Amber Nicole Thurman’s death, in August 2022, was officially deemed “preventable” by a state committee tasked with reviewing pregnancy-related deaths. Thurman’s case is the first time a preventable abortion-related death has come to public attention since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana reported.
Now, “we actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the abortion-rights group Reproductive Freedom for All, during a call with media. “It cannot go on.”
Doctors are erring on the side of caution to avoid potential lawsuits and even jail time
I get it’s risky and money is needed to survive, and prison is bad, and all, but it seems a bit hypocritical for doctors to violate their modern day version of the Hippocratic Oath.
Especially the part where it says:
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
That’s a place where life-saving decisions should always transcend law, and there should be a law (since we can’t go on gentleman’s agreements anymore) that says as much to cut out this partisan horse shit that vacillates and trends downward every year.
Can’t believe it’s 2024 and our big accomplishment is that America figured out how to politicize the human body, and the uterus in particular.
I get it’s risky and money is needed to survive, and prison is bad, and all, but it seems a bit hypocritical for doctors to violate their modern day version of the Hippocratic Oath.
They rationalize it by saying that they can’t help anyone if they are sent to jail. It is partly true so I don’t think we should blame the doctors here.
