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.”
This may be the first confirmed case, but it’s probably not a good idea to make it the poster case for pro-choice. Let’s look at the facts:
- She was pregnant with twins, and wanted an abortion.
- She couldn’t legally do it in her home state Georgia, so she had to travel to North Carolina and get abortion pills there.
- A few days later, when she was already back home, she started to suffer from severe complications.
- The doctors in Georgia could not legally perform the procedure that could have saved her life - a surgical removal of what remained of the fetus - because it was to close to abortion.
The article says the clinic in North Carolina could have performed that procedure, but does not state why she was not brought there. Maybe her condition was too bad for the long travel? Maybe she was evacuated to the nearest hospital (a decision which does, generally, make a lot of sense) which could not have signed her away for an illegal (by Georgian law) operation outstate? Maybe it was medically and legally possible to drive/fly her there, but it was too expensive for her? Either way - it is clear that the ban on abortions in Georgia (made possible “thanks” to the Roe vs Wade overruling) is the direct reason why she could not get the treatment which could have save her life.
BUT!
The pro-life camp can easily pin this on the abortion pills, claiming that a nation-wide abortion bad would have prevented her from receiving them and therefore would have prevented her death (and the aborted twins’ death. They won’t forget to include that)
Cause of death; infection, conservatism
Well, what the fuck did everyone think would happen?
This is what everyone thought would happen. Both sides thought this would happen, one side wants it to happen.
this. this was the point.
punch the first person to suggest this was an unintended consequence of these laws.
Worth pointing out that she died in August of 2022* - not long after Roe v Wade was overturned. Apparently it took a while for the hoops to be jumped through to officially call this a preventable death.
So it’s very, very likely that many women have died as well.
I’m sure that was a typo and you meant 2022.
Yep you’re right
Wasting lives, wasting precious resources investigating, and wasting everyone’s time, while making more people miserable. Freedom, fuck yeah.
A lot of pro-birth people argue “obviously things are different if the mother’s life is in danger”, but that ignores that there’s often nothing obvious or definite about the line between “safe” and dangerous. Doctors are erring on the side of caution to avoid potential lawsuits and even jail time, and this is the result. People bleeding out in parking lots, suffering irreversible damage to their body, and people dying.
Prior to the ban, politicians said that they feared doctors would use the “she’s in danger wink wink” defense and made it very very hard to use that defense, and as a result it’s very very hard for women to get the care they need.
Well I guess they get dead women now.
There needs to be a group of lawyers out there with spines of steel to take on a class action lawsuit(or several) to sue the fuck out of each of the states and politicians who pushed these anti-woman laws through and they resulted in women dying or being injured by healthcare being withheld… as mandated by the laws.
These soulless pieces of shit only understand money, getting sued into the ground should get their fucking attention. I’d prefer jailtime, but Donald Dump shows republican shitheads don’t go to jail, so I say class action lawsuit time.
I’ve seen pro-life folks argue that but they frame it like… “the law is fine and it’s a failure of the doctors not being willing to understand the law which led to deaths” and they’ll also follow that up by saying that even if women die, they’re saving more lives by preventing abortions so it’s a net positive.
I find it difficult to argue against that perspective. That is, I disagree with them but also it’s hard to argue when they frame abortions as basically murder.
I’ve seen pro-life folks
Those people are NOT pro-life. They’re anti-abortion. It would be much better to use the correct term instead of pandering to the idea that it is about saving lives.
-
Do we want doctors to also be lawyers? Spend all their time reading and interpreting laws and studying case precident on every little scenario? There’s a reason why these are two separate and highly trained professions. We have a healthcare problem and we want doctors to spend their time doctoring, not lawyering. Also, it’s never so clear on the medical side anyway, these are judgement calls. So it will go to court and review and all that stuff. The prosecution can always find one doctor to say it wasn’t necessary.
-
This is the old is fetus life.
This is the old is fetus life.
Yeah, and the problem there is that logic and science won’t change someone’s mind about it. It’s subjective from their perspective.
Fetus is life, but contained within another life. Therefore, container’s life takes precedence.
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I think its easier to argue on premises. Why is abortion murder? The bible says life begins at first breath, etc…
Edit: In the US its fairly easy, because you just have to get them to acknowledge its a religious belief. From there its easy to say that ‘well do you believe in the 1st amendment’ and note that establishment of religion is forbidden. Anti abortion laws have to be grounded in reality and from there its harder to argue that fetuses are persons.
The bible also gives a magic abortion potion recipe that only works if the woman cheated, so it’s pretty rich to say that God disapproves.
The Test for an Unfaithful Wife (Numbers 5)
11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah[c] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.
16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[d] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”
“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[e] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
Plus, Jesus didn’t even mention abortion once. He ordered his followers to feed the poor, but now they fight against feeding the poor and fight for causes Jesus never talked about.
I am beginning to think that true Christians are communists.
Where does the Bible say life begins at first breath? I know that is says this, “13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Psalm 139:13 NIV.
If I were to argue on premises, then I would start with a higher premise: Why is murder illegal? If it is my religious belief that murder is wrong, then by your argument doesn’t that make homicide laws a violation of the 1st Amendment and thus unconstitutional?
On a religious basis murder is legal anyway. There’s not a lot of real morality in the bible without serious cherry picking. The slaughter of Jericho, for instance where everyone, even children were slaughtered. At the end of the day law is always determined by human judgement: either through discourse directly or vigorous cherry picking of contradictory statements in holy scripture.
As to life at first breath there’s Genesis 2, Adam became alive at first breath. Then as Zombiepirate noted the prescription for unfaithfulness (numbers 5) is to drink a potion that causes miscarriage, indicating that even if the bible considers a fetus to be a person, it has no problem executing them for the crimes of the mother.
Do we pay doctors for their legal acumen now?
This WHO article mentions this and cites the study
Evidence shows that restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions
And conservatives laughing.
I am pro-life in general, but that is a good point.
Pro life is not the right term. It’s much better to say you’re anti abortion than to pretend it’s about saving lives.
Not even that since it doesn’t really prevent abortion or pregnancy in general. It’s just anti-choice. Or anti-woman.
Not really. If I was anti abortion I wouldn’t be proponent of it in most cases. You are making shit up.
The only assumption he’s making is that, if you refer to yourself as “pro-life”, you mean what everyone else in America who calls themselves “pro-life” means. It’s a reasonable assumption, I mean, that’s the way words work.
I think you all need a new name for yourselves. It sounds absurd at this point
What do you mean? I am not a member of any group, and I don’t know how is being pro life absurd. In fact I don’t understand how being opposed to killing a baby that is a month or two away from being born without valid reason (or any other reason that is non-threatening to woman’s mental or physical health after certain point of pregnancy) is that extreme.
The name “pro-life” is absurd. Too far from reality
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.
When they can is the key phrase. When the law says you can’t it’s no longer a doctors problem. This is 100% on the stupid politics.
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.
And when good faith legislators tried to make it easier for doctors to give care religious groups lobbied to block the fixes.
It’s still malpractice. Doesn’t matter if it’s illegal.
Which is why we’re also seeing entire maternity wards shut down. Doctors can’t provide care without risking being jailed or being sued for malpractice, so they just won’t practice at all.
That happened to a nearby hospital where I live and it’s an abortion friendly state. It’s because hospitals don’t make any money from it compared to other departments like surgery and cancer care where they can bill Medicaid/Medicare out the ass.
Ah, we can blame capitalism for that one.
‘Pro-life’ my ass
It has never been “pro-life” or about saving the lives of “children”. This has always been about controlling women.
Most aren’t aware, but this is the crux of the issue. Evangelicals do not value equity and presume others are ignorant/incorrect.
Doubtless you have that. Off the top of my head, you should expect to find:
- Those who want to control women.
- Those who are uncomfortable with the control aspect but want to get elected.
- Pro choice people who want to get elected.
- A mix of comfort and discomfort with the ideas of pro choice and controlling women, but still want to get elected.
Fascists don’t just lie, they invert the truth precisely.
Trickle-down economics, for example, was pitched as “a rising tide lifts all boats”, when in reality trickle down economics is the exact opposite of that. A rising tide lifting all boats would be the poorest person getting money until they have as much money as the second poorest person, then those two getting money until they have as much money as the third poorest person, and so on. Lying, reality-inverting fascists got up on a stage–in front of people-- and said that process was the same as giving the people with the most money even more money.
In a way it’s brilliant, because it’s so brazenly and bafflingly stupid that it acts like an EMP for logical thought. Which they know, and intentionally utilize. The most important skill a fascist has to have is the ability to make people stupid enough to vote for them. What better way than to go for the jugular and assault reality itself?
With an incessant anti-reality static, courtesy of your fox newses and heritage foundations, reality offers no obstacle at all.
Stop using “prolife” as a term.
It frames their stance positively, call it what it is: “anti-choice”
“Forced-breeders”
Medical slavery enthusiasts.
Pro-forced birth.
Anti-rights
I propose to stop using “pro-life” and “pro-choice”. Instead use “pro-quantity” and “pro-quality”.
They are pro-life, just not your life.
No they are not pro life, and they should never be allowed to use that term or make that claim without protests.
They are anti-abortion. That is as far as it goes. They don’t care about giving an expecting mother pre-natal care if she can’t afford it. The certainly don’t give a shit about post-natal care. And if there’s something wrong with her baby an they both die? That’s “god’s will.”
All they care about is making and keeping abortion illegal. It’s that binary of an issue for them and it’s sick.
It’s so fucking comical to me too that they call it “god’s will” when children die of the most horrifying, excruciating diseases imagnable long before they’re capable of understanding what’s happening, but when a pregnant woman makes an informed decision not to die during childbirth over a shrimp living inside her taco, that’s a bridge too far, and the all-mighty creator and ruler of the universe is very disappointed in you for killing one of his children when he was powerless to stop it.
Sweetie, maybe your fairytale sugar daddy’s will isn’t all that benevolent. 💀
You would think that an omnipotent being could just prevent any abortion from happening if he didn’t want them to happen.
No, no, you see it’s free will. Which makes total sense, because god can’t possibly foresee what we’re going to do, which is a problem omniscient beings definitely struggle with. Or if he can foresee what we’re going to do and he is omniscient, then he’s not omnibenevolent because he had exact foreknowledge of what was going to happen and let it anyway. After all, why “test” if you already know the precise outcome if not to watch people suffer for fun? If you need people to learn lessons, why can’t you just magically teach them those lessons? And if you’re not capable of this, how are you omnipotent?
Pick at most two of the three; you can’t have all of them.
I don’t think everyone ever claimed the Abrahamic god to be benevolent.
They are also against contraception, because they are pro forced birth.
I’d say they were pro forced birth except, as we see in this example, they don’t even care if there is no birth.
They have a concept of a birth.
Seeing that they oppose school lunches, gun control and free healthcare, not your children’s lives either.
If they were pro-life and consistent that lives are more important than human rights, they would also be clamoring for gun control on the basis of saving children’s lives in schools. Or, fuck, universal healthcare is an easy one, higher taxes for the wealthy aren’t even harming anyone’s rights and it saves lives.
But it is actually about controlling women with medical slavery and claims about saving lives are all lies they don’t actually believe.
They are pro forced birth. They don’t care about infants, children, or adults.
You’re right it’s not pro-lefe, it’s really anti-choice.
When will a responsible politician be tried for murder? I know - never. But they should be. Because this shit is premeditated and with malicious, despicable intent.
“Pro-life”
I bet that’s far from the only case, unfortunately.
Just the first confirmed, and it’s from 2022. Her original appointment was the exact same day the local law went into effect.
this is a self defense situation now
Your body, their choice.
Just look at what pharma had gotten away with over the last four years. “Undergo this medical procedure or kiss your civil liberties goodbye!”
What were the civil liberties under threat for the non vaccinated?
“Inject this experimental substance (with known severe side effects) into your body or lose your job”
I was honestly expecting to receive a lemmy flavored beatdown for that comment.
I am of the persuasion that even if we consider the products to be safe and tested, coercion is still the wrong way to go about it.
I did not reject the pharma shots because it was allegedly unsafe or experimental, but because I don’t believe the threat it claims to prevent against represents a substantial enough risk to warrant all the destructive measures we’ve all been forced to endure.
Hey, look, it’s
Typhoid MaryCOVID Larry, who wants all the privileges of society yet none of the responsibilities. If you don’t want to uphold the social contract, I’m okay with it. Get out.Ah, like clockwork.
So I’m supposed to just buy your anti-intellectualism rhetoric? Why should I trust your dumb ass over an expert in the field?
I’m always lamenting how sides reach extreme positions because nobody talks to eachother anymore. So instead of taking another potshot back at you, I will be genuine for a moment (a rarity, if you peruse my post history) and lay out my rationale.
- I am unconvinced that the purported threat amounted to anything more than a seasonal flu.
- Dreadful predictions and models were drummed up early on in the interests of industry and investors seeking to create “healthy new markets for vaccines”.
- I do not know anyone, or of anyone, in the flesh who had fallen ill or died in a way as the disease was described. Only through screens, had anyone ever seemed to hear of it. Take away the screens, and one might not have even known that there was a supposed disease of medieval proportions.
- I was among throngs of crowds in major cities during the height of the issue (protests/rallies) and never fell sick, nor had anyone I’d known also in those crowds.
- Upon closer examination, experts (I mean the experts™) often held conflict of interest or were outright placed in public eye by aforementioned industry and investor interests. To the degree that I and others now joke about the sloganeering.
We are going on five years from those events. I don’t have any delusions that any amount of argumentation or persuasion will be able to swing either of us toward the other’s view. And yet, here we are.
This ignores that, until we had an effective treatment program and mass vaccinations, it had a mortality rate of about 20 times that of the flu. After effective treatment plans, vaccines, antivirals, etc. it was brought more in line with the flu. 0.5% mortality means that you need to know 200 people who got sick to know someone who died. This also ignores all the people we saw online who would deny their family members died of COVID. Having had friends working in hospitals, COVID deaths were happening. And let’s be honest, how many people have you personally run into who died of the flu, yet that happens every year. We just shrug and move on. They were old, it was their time. And if it was your child, it was devastating, but could you even relate if your friend’s infant had died of the flu?
People historically are really bad at statistical analysis, so tiny risks over huge occurrences are dismissed, and most people will get away with it so we feel like the bad outcomes didn’t happen at all. But they do, and they did, and now a lot more people died than had to because people couldn’t stay home when they were sick, or wear a mask in public, or not cough in other people’s faces because it’s just a flu. And I honestly can’t show any respect to people who think their life is so much more important than anyone else’s that they can’t show a little respect and just try to not risk a stranger’s health because it might be a little uncomfortable.
Religious people should be locked in asylums.
I am religious. I like having a non-scientific justification for my non-empircal beliefs.
I think you have an issue with people using religion as a shield for their crappy behavior. Controlling someone else is vile, using your religion to do it is unbelievablely cruel.
Similar to cops, there’s gonna be big acab type “all religious are assholes” soon if the good apples don’t start taking care of the bad apples.
Similar to cops, there’s gonna be big acab type “all religious are assholes” soon if the good apples don’t start taking care of the bad apples.
There are a lot of good religious people out there, from many religions, who aren’t forcing their way of life on others, who spend their time trying to be loving and care for their neighbor. What precisely they’re supposed to do about the “bad apples” of religious people isn’t very clear. I can’t exactly report the Southern Baptist Church to Internal Religious Affairs.
I am not responsible for the views of other religious people. I’m responsible for my own views. I can argue with those who disagree with me, but I cannot force them to stop being controlling assholes.
Maybe, just maybe, making assumptions about people based on associations they may not actually have is a bad idea. Maybe the world is more complicated than that.
Unfortunately the good apples and bad apples are generally in entirely different barrels (churches), so the good apples don’t have much chance to influence the bad ones
The problem is people using it to control others. Religion was important before for human development. I am unsure of its value now, when most places have rules and laws in place to keep people in check.
Humans have a right to their thoughts and feelings including the weird ones. We have to protect that right. What they do not have a right to is control over anyone else on the basis of that. That is the problem here.
The carceral side of the mental health system still exists and still hurts a lot of people, mostly poor and marginalized ones. People still die and get abused and lose their rights because of it. So it’s not a thing to wish for the expansion of.
I don’t want anyone to interpret this to mean that I think it was in any way OK that this woman died, but I do want to point out what I see as an objective bias here.
According to the National Libary of Medicine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554338/
108 women died from complications related to legal abortions during a 12 year period between 1998 and 2010, for an average of 9 per year. Where are these stories on the front page?
This is a story that is posted to elicit an emotional reaction rather than a honest attempt to examine whether there is actual recorded medical evidence that more women are dying as a result of this policy.
Edit:
- Post citing scientific data -11.
- “Religious people should be locked in asylums” +10.
Says a lot about this community.
On the one hand, you have some women dying of complications arising from an elective procedure that they chose to have, based either on medical necessity or other factors. On the other hand you have a woman in need of medical care that she wished to have, and was denied, due to her reproductive autonomy being denied, then dying as a result.
Yet you have a hard time distinguishing what makes these things different?
No, what I have a problem with is using a sample size of 1 as evidence of an epidemic and the perception that no women die from legal abortion procedures.
Also, from the report: “In 20 of the 108 cases, the abortion was performed as a result of a severe medical condition where continuation of the pregnancy threatened the woman’s life.”
I point this out because another misconception is that you can always save the woman’s life with an abortion if it is threatened by the pregnancy.
and the perception that no women die from legal abortion procedures.
I don’t know anyone who has edit: [ever expressed] that perception. Anecdotal I know, but I’m skeptical it’s a common belief among adults of voting age.
using a sample size of 1 as evidence of an epidemic
I don’t see that word, nor any language that conveys that impression in the article.
I do see this:
At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.
That seems pretty straightforward and unsensationalized to me.
It is literally the highlighted quote in the article: “we actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people.”
This is true as evidenced by the story, but what is also true is that abortions also kill people. So the question should be is it a net positive or a net negative? I don’t see this being examined in any objective and scientific way.
This is kind of just a bad argument.
Nobody is arguing that an abortion can save a woman from all consequences.
Nobody is arguing that death is impossible as a result of abortion.
But when somebody dies because something prevented them from getting a procedure that would have been highly likely to save them, that doesn’t come into conflict with the possibility of death from the procedure. It’s a matter of personal choice.
Especially considering the maternal mortality rate (# of deaths per 100,000 live births) is 17.4, while the case fatality rate for abortions (# of deaths per 100,000 legal induced abortions) is just 0.45
Now imagine how much higher that rate gets when abortions are performed illegally because legislation like this stops safe abortions from being possible, without curbing demand.
Yes, people die from abortions. Yes, people die from pregnancy. Yes, this woman could have died from the abortion procedure even if she was able to get it.
But her chance of death was significantly lower if she had been capable of getting an abortion, which she was not.
^ This is the only attempt at an objective argument in this entire thread and it is not the argument presented by the OPs story, which was the point I was trying to make.
Maternal mortality includes abortions though: A maternal death is defined by the World Health Organization as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy".
Hey, I actually missed that part. (I assumed it was deaths relating to the pregnancy itself, not including additional procedures like abortions)
Still, 17.4 - 0.45 = 16.95, which is still substantially higher than the case fatality rate of abortion-related fatalities alone.
I don’t see this being examined in any objective and scientific way.
What would be scientific would be to allow women and their doctors to evaluate those risks together and make the decision without Republican lawmakers continuing to try to insert themselves in between. Sorry if that’s too emotional.
I’m also quite sure there are scientific journal papers that cover this. I feel like you are expecting an awful lot from an article about a specific event on politico.
It is literally the highlighted quote in the article: “we actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people.”
For someone who complains about others not being objective, I find it unexpected that this is what you would quote to support this assertion by you:
using a sample size of 1 as evidence of an epidemic
sorry you’re being downvoted, but i support scientific data AND putting religious people in asylums.
I could care less about being downvoted, but it made me realize that even people who claim to be interested in objective truth and facts are no different than the religious people who they mock for ignoring scientific evidence for things like global warming. Everyone just wants to reaffirm what they already believe.
“Still a man, he hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” -Paul Simon
“Still a man, he hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” -Paul Simon
I think you need to heed your own advice based on how this discussion has gone.
It’s god’s will. It was just her time.
/s
Tots and pears.
