Amber Thurman First Named ‘Preventable’ Abortion Death Since Bans

A Georgia woman died after being not receiving timely medical care due to the state’s restrictive abortion law, investigative journalism site ProPublica reports.
Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, experienced a rare complication after taking abortion pills and died during emergency surgery in August 2022, according to medical reports obtained by the site.
Newsweek has contacted the hospital where she died for comment via email.
ProPublica said her case marks the first time an abortion-related death that an official state committee deemed “preventable” has been made public. It said it will soon publish details of a second case.
Thurman’s death came after Georgia passed a law that made performing a dilation and curettage (D&C), a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus following an abortion or miscarriage, a felony offense with medical exceptions—but doctors had warned that the law’s language is vague and difficult to interpret.
Thurman, an otherwise healthy medical assistant and single mother to a 6-year-old boy, discovered she was pregnant with twins in the summer of 2022, soon after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, prompting bans and restrictions on abortions in numerous states.
She made the decision to terminate to preserve her newfound stability, her best friend Ricaria Baker told ProPublica.
Thurman had wanted a surgical abortion in her home state and hoped Georgia’s ban would be paused in court, but as her pregnancy reached nine weeks, she was forced to seek care at a clinic in North Carolina.
On the day of her appointment, Baker said they hit traffic and the clinic could not hold her spot for longer than 15 minutes. Instead, Thurman was given a medication abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol, a regimen approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Abortion using medication is the most common way to end a pregnancy in the U.S., and deaths from complications are extremely rare—only 32 deaths were reported to the FDA through 2022 out of almost 6 million who have used mifepristone to terminate a pregnancy, regardless of whether the drug played a role.
After taking the pills, Thurman experienced cramping, but her condition worsened over several days with vomiting and heavy bleeding.
She was transported to Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Georgia, on the evening of August 18, where doctors discovered she had not expelled all the fetal tissue from her body.
She was diagnosed with “acute severe sepsis” the following morning, but even then, a D&C was not done. ProPublica reported that doctors continued to gather information and dispense medicine instead of performing the procedure even as Thurman was breathing rapidly and at risk of bleeding out.
At 12:05 p.m. that day, more than 17 hours after Thurman arrived at the hospital, a doctor who specializes in intensive care notified the OB-GYN that her condition was deteriorating. She was taken to an operating room two hours later.
By that stage, the situation was so dire it required open abdominal surgery. The doctor performed the D&C and found a hysterectomy was also required. During the procedure, Thurman’s heart stopped.
Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee, which includes 10 doctors, concluded that there was a “good chance” that Thurman’s death could likely have been prevented if the D&C had been provided earlier.
While the official reviews of individual patient cases are not made public, ProPublica said it had obtained reports confirming at least two women have died after being unable to access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, while noting that there are almost certainly others.
Reproductive rights groups expressed outrage after ProPublica’s report was published on Monday.
“Amber would be alive right now if it wasn’t for Donald Trump & [Georgia Governor] Brian Kemp’s abortion ban,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, wrote on X. “They have blood on their hands.”
Pregnancy Justice wrote on X: “This is absolutely devastating. Amber Thurman waited 20 hours for doctors to finally operate on her spreading infection, sinking blood pressure, and failing organs. By then, it was too late. If she had access to timely care, she would still be here. Abortion bans kill people.”
Kemp’s office has been contacted via email for comment.