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.”

    • baru@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • RightEdofer@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Not even that since it doesn’t really prevent abortion or pregnancy in general. It’s just anti-choice. Or anti-woman.

      • Matriks404@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Not really. If I was anti abortion I wouldn’t be proponent of it in most cases. You are making shit up.

        • forrcaho@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

      • Matriks404@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        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.