MICHIGAN, USA — Tears filled the eyes of Amber Thurman's brokenhearted family on Thursday as they told her story at US Vice President and Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey's rally.
Thurman, a Georgia mother featured Monday in an in-depth ProPublica report, died in 2022. The report stated that her death was the first time an abortion-related death officially deemed "preventable" has surfaced.
"I want y'all to know Amber was not a statistic," her mother, Shanette, said. "She was loved by a family, a strong family, and we would have done whatever to get my baby, our baby, the help that she needed."
At nine weeks pregnant, the ProPublica report lays out, Thurman had traveled to North Carolina for a scheduled surgical abortion. Still, he could not make it in time and was given the pills to terminate her pregnancy instead. Georgia's 2019 "heartbeat" law prohibits abortions after the point a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is generally around six weeks. Medical professionals and women's health advocates have disputed the term "fetal heartbeat," adding that the way it's being used is misleading.
Thurman had sought an abortion after learning she was pregnant with twins, the report states, because she wanted to maintain the stability she'd worked to establish as a single mother raising her son, with a recent move out of her family's home into an apartment and plans to soon enroll in nursing school.
Thurman experienced a complication with the pills in which all the fetal tissue had not been expelled from her body. The ProPublica report describes a routine procedure, a D&C (dilation and curettage) that would clear the tissue, which she went to a metro Atlanta hospital to have performed.
Instead, she reportedly waited in a hospital bed as an infection spread and doctors took 20 hours to operate. She had told them her miscarriage was not spontaneous, but due to the abortion pills, exposing a potential legal uncertainty for the procedure where Georgia law prohibits a doctor using an instrument "with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy." In this case, while doctors would not have been terminating the pregnancy, the law only acknowledges the legality of removing a "dead unborn child" in a "naturally occurring" scenario.
The long delay in care for Thurman resulted in her death being officially deemed preventable by a Georgia Department of Public Health committee that reviews maternal mortality. Georgia has one of the highest rates for maternal mortality in the country, and it is disproportionately high for Black women.
"I wanna say that it is very disheartening that my sister was allowed to suffer for 20 hours. She suffered. It was nothing that we could do to help her," said her sister, Andrika. "We trusted the health care professionals to do their job and save her, but they failed her."
Her mother, Shanette, said she "did not want the public to know her pain" and constantly pushed ProPublica away before she decided to tell her daughter's story.
"People around the world need to know that this was preventable. Two years later after speaking with my daughters because I lost strength," said Shanette. "I lost hope. You're looking at a mother that is broken. The worst pain ever that a mother that a parent could ever feel. You're looking at it."
ProPublica's report notes that on July 20, 2022, when Georgia's law went into effect, Thurman had just passed the six-week mark where Georgia's law generally sets a boundary.
"They just let her die because of some stupid abortion ban. They treated her like she was just another number. They didn't care for her as if she was their daughter or their granddaughter," said her sister, CJ. "She's not here. She will never come back."
After hearing about Thurman's death, Vice President Harris highlighted Thurman's death, giving the family an opportunity to share their experience.
"This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school," Harris previously said. "This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down."
Harris will be in Atlanta on Friday to show her support for abortion rights.