No, Women are Not Dying From Pro-Life Laws

Kamala Harris accused former President Donald Trump and the pro-life movement of killing two women during a campaign speech in Atlanta on Friday. In a claim that has circulated throughout the media, the vice president claimed “Trump abortion bans” took the lives of at least two women in Georgia, including the life of 28-year-olf Amber Thurman. But pro-life experts say the claim turns reality on its head.

“We know that at least two women — and those are only the stories we know — here in the state of Georgia died — died because of a Trump abortion ban,” Harris claimed baselessly before a boisterous crowd. She went on to give a bowdlerized form of the life of one of those women, 28-year-old Amber Thurman:

“When she discovered that she was pregnant, she decided she wanted to have an abortion, but because of the Trump abortion ban here in Georgia, she was forced to travel out of state to receive the health care that she needed. But when she returned to Georgia, she needed additional care, so she went to a hospital. But, you see, under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed. Understand what a law like this means: Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.”

“And we will speak her name! Amber Nicole Thurman!” said Harris, who has not said the names of American citizens killed by illegal immigrants, as she led the crowd in a chant of the deceased abortion industry victim’s name.

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Such claims have received widespread media coverage, beginning with a story in the left-leaning investigative journalistic website, ProPublica. Numerous outlets have run with the story since its publication. “ProPublica has been investigating how abortion bans across the country are affecting women. And guess what? It’s killing them,” said MSNBC host Joy Reid last Wednesday.

But Amber Nicole Thurman died, not from pro-life laws, but from the negligence of the abortion industry, and disinformation from pro-abortion media and political figures.

Thurman traveled to neighboring North Carolina to have an aspiration abortion, technically known as a dilation and curettage (D & C) abortion, when she was nine weeks pregnant. However, she arrived a few minutes late for her appointment, so the abortionist’s office gave her the abortion pill — a two-drug cocktail of mifepristone and misoprostol — and sent her home. She took the abortion pill, which is known for a panoply of harmful side effects including incomplete abortion, and waited at her home in Georgia. She had an incomplete abortion, with fetal tissue remaining inside her body, creating infection.

Thurman suffered extreme pain, with no follow-up from the abortion industry, for four days. She then went to a hospital in Georgia to have the remaining parts of her unborn child’s body removed. The procedure to remove those remains is a D & C, which can kill an unborn child but also remove the remaining parts of a child’s body due to a botched abortion.

“Amber Thurman did not need an abortion when she got to the hospital in Georgia. She needed a D & C procedure to clear whatever tissue was left in her uterus. At that point, her unborn children would have already been dead,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told guest host Jody Hice on “Washington Watch” Friday. “At nine weeks gestation, where Amber Thurman was, about 7% of women have an incomplete abortion, which, of course, can lead to sepsis.”

Thurman developed sepsis. Yet Georgia physicians did not administer the appropriate standard of care, which remains legal under Georgia’s pro-life protections. That may be due to media misinformation that such practices are illegal, pro-life advocates say. “The media has an obligation to stop saying that they’re not allowed to” carry out lifesaving care under lifesaving pro-life statutes, said Szoch. “ProPublica said that a D & C is illegal in Georgia. That is just false information, and they need to be held accountable for that.”

No state prevents a D & C to remove the tissue of a child who has already died from a miscarriage or abortion. “There was nothing in those pro-life laws that prevented Amber Thurmond from receiving care when she got to that hospital in Georgia. She should have received a D & C. … It is only illegal in Georgia if it is used to intentionally kill an unborn child, and this obviously would not have been the case for her,” said Szoch. “There is no state in this country where it is illegal for a procedure to be performed that saves the life of a mother, but unintentionally results in the death of an unborn child. There is no time medically when the direct killing of an unborn child is necessary to save a mother’s life, but there are instances where a procedure must be performed to save a mother’s life, where the child regrettably dies.”

Nor does anything in the bill require doctors to wait until a patient is “at death’s door,” she said.

The fault lies with a 2016 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruling that expanded the use of the abortion pill well beyond its initial parameters. The FDA approved the abortion pill mifepristone, often known as RU-486, for use up to seven weeks’ gestation in 2000, but the abortion industry steadfastly ignored the law and dispensed the pill well past that date with legal impunity. In 2016, the Obama administration’s FDA formally changed the protocol to allow abortionists to dispense the abortion drug up to 10 weeks, making the abortion industry’s practice legal.

“The FDA removed the safety requirements for the dispensing of mifepristone, which would have led to her unborn children’s death still, but would have saved her life, perhaps,” said Szoch. “And the doctors who were at that Georgia hospital, the last group that we must keep in mind here that’s at fault is the media that’s pushing this narrative that laws that are protecting unborn children put women’s lives at risk.”

Harris said, “Medical experts have now determined that Amber’s death was preventable.”

“We agree their deaths were preventable,” said SBA Pro-Life America’s State Policy Director Katie Daniel in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “But let’s be absolutely clear: Georgia’s law and every pro-life state law calls on doctors to act in circumstances just like theirs. If abortion advocates weren’t spreading misinformation and confusion to score political points, it’s possible the outcome would have been different.”

Harris claimed that “20 states have Trump abortion bans.”

Donald Trump had nothing to do with instituting pro-life laws in any state. He campaigned against Florida’s heartbeat law, which protects unborn life after approximately six weeks gestation, and initially indicated he would vote in favor of a Florida ballot initiative that would legalize abortion until birth. (Trump later clarified he would vote against the measure, which he called too extreme.)

“The common factors in the tragic deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller are dangerous abortion drugs and inappropriate care for their complications,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser told TWS. “Instead of a real investigation of the profit-driven abortion industry, pro-abortion media and Democrats who support no limits on abortion are running cover. The pro-life community has spent years raising the alarm about abortion drugs that send one in 25 women to the emergency room. Specifically, we’ve warned about illegal abortion drug rings like Aid Access that pocket a quick $80 while putting women’s lives in serious danger.”

Szoch agreed, “We have an FDA that has approved a drug that sends 1 in 25 women who are pregnant to the emergency room following its usage. That is something that is certainly contributing to maternal mortality. … An honest discussion about maternal mortality in this country has to include the damage that abortion is doing to maternal health care.”

The FDA documented 4,207 adverse events from mifepristone use — including 26 deaths — between 2000 and 2021. That does not include 1,045 hospitalizations, 603 events requiring a blood transfusion, and 413 infections. Independent abortionists (not including those affiliated with Planned Parenthood) have killed 38 women in New York state alone — including girls as young as 13.

Harris not only supports the widespread availability of mifepristone — the drug that contributed to these women’s deaths — but encouraged abortionists to mail abortion pills illegally to women in pro-life states and incentivized drug stores to sell the abortion pill directly to women.

“Kamala Harris owes America an apology for her role in supporting deregulation of a deadly combination of drugs that benefits her political friends at Planned Parenthood. Both the Biden-Harris administration and the FDA should have made patient safety their goal, not assisting a quick sale of deadly chemical abortion pills,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “The FDA knows women have died, and hiding those risks is political and medical negligence.”

LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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