What Caused the Tragic Deaths of Two Georgia Women?
A left-leaning media outlet recently publicized the heartbreaking stories of two Georgia women who died following failed abortions. Amber Thurman, 28 years old and nine weeks pregnant with twins, was given abortion drugs at a facility in North Carolina after she ran late for a surgical abortion appointment. Similarly, 41-year-old Candi Miller had multiple medical conditions including lupus that can make pregnancy risky; instead of going to a doctor, she ordered abortion drugs online. In both cases, the drugs failed to clear the uterus of tissue, which can lead to severe infection. Both women suffered for days before their deaths – one receiving totally inadequate treatment at a Georgia hospital and one too afraid to go to the hospital at all.
The outcry was immediate. Everyone agrees these women didn’t have to die – but not on why. Pro-life advocates recognize their tragic deaths and those of their unborn children as a result of complications from dangerous abortion drugs, together with unnecessarily delayed emergency treatment. Politicians and media with a different agenda seized on their stories to point the finger of blame at Georgia’s pro-life law that protects babies with detectable heartbeats. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who is the first sitting vice president to tour an abortion center, even planned a speech in Georgia around this false narrative.
Here’s the truth, based on the publicly available facts.
Amber Thurman’s symptoms – uterine tenderness and odor, low blood pressure, elevated white blood cell count – clearly indicate sepsis. She needed and should have received a D&C (dilation and curettage) to clear her uterus of the infected tissue, a simple procedure used for many gynecological reasons that have nothing to do with abortion. But her physicians apparently did not recognize the urgency of her situation until it was too late – possibly because abortion advocates misrepresent abortion drugs as “safe and effective” and discourage women from telling ER doctors that they had a DIY abortion. In a blatant falsehood, the article that revealed Thurman’s death described the D&C procedure itself as “criminalized” in Georgia. A straightforward reading of the law, which provides for exceptions “in the event of a medical emergency” when there is a heartbeat or to remove a dead unborn child when there is not, shows this is just not true.
Sadly, had Candi Miller sought medical care, it might have saved her life. If she had been diagnosed with renal insufficiency or another serious complication arising from her chronic conditions, Georgia law would allow her doctor to intervene to “prevent substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” But her family, including her young son, believe she was afraid of the doctors and afraid of going to jail for seeking an abortion. This fear rests on two more falsehoods promoted by abortion advocates: that women can be prosecuted, and that doctors have to wait until death is imminent to intervene. No pro-life state law subjects women to prosecution or requires “imminence” or “certainty” before a doctor can act to save a patient’s life.
The pro-life medical community has been warning about the dangers of abortion drugs for years. According to the FDA’s own label, one in 25 women will have to go to the emergency room after taking mifepristone, which has a “black box” warning alerting physicians to be on the watch for potentially deadly sepsis. Almost 6% of the time, the combination of mifepristone and misoprostol – used to cause the death of the unborn child and expel its body – fails to completely rid the uterus of all the tissue.
For years, we’ve sounded the alarm about overseas, illegal online pill distributors like Aid Access, where Candi Miller obtained the drugs for $80. These drugs are sold without any in-person testing or interaction with a doctor – a faceless process made possible by the FDA’s reckless removal of important safeguards.
Pro-abortion medical organizations have taken a very different tack, spinning these potent drugs as “safer than Tylenol.” In order to arrive at that talking point, they compare the FDA protocol for using abortion drugs to an overdose of this over-the-counter pain reliever found in homes across America. Miller did have Tylenol and Benadryl in her system when she died…and fentanyl, suggesting she was self-medicating for serious pain. Though a medical examiner could not officially determine what killed Miller, abortion activists would have us believe that the Tylenol was actually worse than the DIY abortion drugs that set off the chain of events leading to her death.
The very different reactions to these tragedies demonstrate the extremes to which abortion advocates will go in order to turn the public against pro-life laws. For two years since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, pro-abortion media have unreasonably frightened doctors about when they can intervene in a pregnancy emergency and frightened women about their ability to receive the care they need. Pro-life advocates, in contrast, strongly encourage states to provide the clear guidance doctors need.
The tragic deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller were indeed preventable. They deserved far better care than they got, and they deserve justice. But it’s past time to stop the misinformation. We must place the blame where it belongs – not on pro-life laws that protect both mother and child, but on abortions intended to end the lives of three unborn children that ended up taking the lives of their mothers, too.
Ingrid Skop, M.D., a Board-certified obstetrician & gynecologist, is Vice President and Director of Medical Affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute
