WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday that the death of a young Georgia mother who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat complications from an abortion pill highlights the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.
Amber Thurman’s death, first reported by ProPublica on Mondayhappened just two weeks after Georgia’s strict abortion ban went into effect in 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the state’s abortion law. Trump appointed three of the judges who made that decision and repeatedly said He believes that states should decide on abortion laws.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” Harris said in a statement. “Women are bleeding to death in parking lots, being turned away from emergency rooms and losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot choose what happens to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
Harris brought up Thurman’s “tragic” case again just hours later in an interview with three journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists. She will likely continue to raise Thurman’s death through Election Day as Democrats seek to use the abortion rights issue to motivate voters. Harris has said she wants to restore Roe v. Wade protections if she is elected president, an unlikely feat that would require federal legislation passed with bipartisan support in Congress.
The Federal Government has determined that Dozens of pregnant women were illegally turned away from emergency rooms, and the number of cases skyrocketed in abortion-banned states like Texas and Missouri following the Supreme Court ruling. Associated Press report Women have been found to have suffered miscarriages in public restrooms, waiting in cars for treatment, or being told by doctors to seek treatment elsewhere. Women have developed infections or lost parts of their reproductive organs after hospitals in states where abortion is banned postponed emergency abortions.
Thurman’s death is the first publicly known case of a woman dying as a result of delayed medical care.
The Trump campaign said on Tuesday that the hospital was to blame for failing to provide life-saving treatment.
“President Trump has always supported exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother provided by Georgia law,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement. “Given these exceptions, it is unclear why doctors did not act quickly to protect Amber Thurman’s life.”
Thurman’s case is currently under review by the state’s Maternal Mortality Commission. The suburban Atlanta hospital that allegedly delayed her treatment has not been reprimanded by the federal government for failing to provide stabilizing treatment to a pregnant patient at any point in the past two years, according to an AP review of federal documents.
Thurman went to the hospital because of complications after taking an abortion pill, two weeks after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law that largely bans abortions and criminalizes performing one. Although Thurman developed sepsis, ProPublica reported, doctors at the hospital did not remove the remaining fetal tissue in her uterus with a procedure called dilation and curettage, or D&C. She died on the operating table shortly after asking her mother to care for her 6-year-old son. ProPublica said it would publish another report on an abortion-related death in the coming days.
Democrats and abortion advocates seized on the report, saying it proved that women’s health was suffering under draconian abortion bans. Abortion opponents rejected that point and dismissed it as misinformation.
“We actually have hard evidence of something we already knew: that abortion bans can kill people,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Monday.
___ Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed a story.
