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.”
Hey, look, it’s Typhoid Mary COVID 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.
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.
