Vice President Kamala Harris has attributed the death of a young mother in Georgia to former President Donald Trump’s actions, particularly his appointment of Supreme Court justices who voted to reverse national abortion rights. The incident has rekindled discussions about abortion access and healthcare policies throughout the United States.
28-year-old Amber Nicole Thurman died in August 2022 due to complications from taking an abortion pill. Reports suggest that Thurman waited for treatment for 20 hours at a hospital in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, before succumbing to a severe infection. Her death took place just a fortnight after Georgia implemented stringent abortion restrictions, following the Supreme Court’s verdict to overturn Roe v. Wade.
VP Harris declared, “This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school. This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
The Vice President underscored the grave implications of limited abortion access, noting that women are encountering dire circumstances, including severe bleeding in parking lots after being turned away from emergency rooms. She also pointed out that these policies are now culminating in women losing their lives, and that survivors of incest and rape are being denied the right to make decisions about their bodies.
The Trump campaign responded to the allegations, attributing the blame to the hospital for failing to provide necessary medical attention. Campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt emphasized that President Trump has always supported exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and threat to the mother’s life, which are encompassed in Georgia’s law. Consequently, she questioned why immediate action was not taken by the doctors to safeguard Amber Thurman’s life.
Thurman’s case is presently under examination by Georgia’s maternal mortality commission. An official state committee has determined that her death was avoidable, according to an investigative piece by ProPublica. The suburban Atlanta hospital, which allegedly deferred her treatment, has not been indicted by the federal government for failure to provide stabilizing treatment to a pregnant patient. This conclusion is derived from a review of federal documents spanning the last two years.
Several pregnant women have been unlawfully turned away from emergency rooms, according to the federal government, with the frequency of such incidents escalating in states with strict abortion prohibitions like Texas and Missouri. Media investigations have revealed that women have been left to miscarry in public restrooms, wait in their cars for treatment, or have been directed by doctors to seek care elsewhere. Some women have developed infections or lost their reproductive capacity after hospitals in abortion-ban states delayed emergency abortions.
The Supreme Court verdict and resulting state abortion laws have led to a spate of complaints against doctors and hospitals, accusing them of refusing to treat women experiencing pregnancy complications. Women in Texas have appealed to U.S. health authorities to investigate local hospitals for denying them abortions for perilous ectopic pregnancies. Likewise, women in Idaho, Tennessee, and Oklahoma have lodged lawsuits alleging they were denied abortions despite facing life-threatening pregnancy complications.
Democrats and advocates of abortion rights have highlighted Thurman’s case, positing it as evidence of how women’s health is compromised under rigid abortion bans. Anti-abortion proponents, on the other hand, have dismissed these assertions, characterizing them as misinformation.
The abortion access debate continues to occupy a central position in American politics. Post the 2022 Supreme Court decision, laws severely restricting or banning abortion rights have been passed in Georgia and approximately a dozen other U.S. states. Trump has expressed his belief that abortion rights should be determined by individual states and should include exceptions for rape, incest, and threat to the mother’s life.
With the upcoming presidential election on November 5, 2024, the issue of abortion rights is expected to remain a focal point of political discourse. Vice President Harris, the Democratic nominee, has indicated that she deems the safeguarding of abortion rights a key campaign issue. The ongoing discourse surrounding cases like Thurman’s exemplifies the complicated and contentious nature of abortion policy in the United States.
