WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday that the death of a young Georgian mother who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat complications from an abortion pill shows the consequences of Donald Trump acts.
The death of Amber Thurman, first reported Monday by ProPublicacame just two weeks after Georgia passed its strict abortion ban in 2022, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down abortion rights nationwide. Trump appointed three of the justices who made that decision and has repeatedly said He believes states should decide abortion laws.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of going to nursing school,” Harris said in a statement. “Women are bleeding out in parking lots, being turned away from emergency rooms, and losing their ability to have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they can’t decide what happens to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
Harris is expected to continue to push Thurman’s case as Democrats try to use the issue of abortion access to motivate women voters.
The federal government has determined that dozens Pregnant women have been illegally turned away from emergency rooms, and the number of cases has increased in states where abortion is banned, such as Texas and Missouri, following the Supreme Court decision. Associated Press report Women have been left to miscarry in public restrooms, waited in their cars for treatment or been told by their doctors to seek care elsewhere. Women have developed infections or lost parts of their reproductive systems after hospitals in states where abortion is banned delayed emergency abortions.
Thurman’s death is the first publicly reported case of a woman dying because of delayed care.
Trump’s campaign said Tuesday that the hospital was at fault for failing to provide life-saving treatment.
“President Trump has consistently supported the exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, as provided for in Georgia law,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement. “With these exceptions in place, it is incomprehensible why doctors did not act quickly to protect Amber Thurman’s life.”
Thurman’s case is under review by the state’s maternal mortality commission. The suburban Atlanta hospital that allegedly delayed her treatment has not been cited by the federal government for failing to provide stabilizing treatment to a pregnant patient in the past two years, according to an AP review of federal records.
Thurman sought help at the hospital for complications related to taking an abortion pill two weeks after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law that largely bans abortion and criminalizes its practice. Even when Thurman developed sepsis, ProPublica reported, doctors at the hospital did not remove the remaining fetal tissue in her uterus with a procedure called a dilation and curettage, or D&C. She died on the operating table, shortly after asking her mother to care for her 6-year-old son. ProPublica said it would publish another report on an abortion-related death in the coming days.
Democrats and abortion rights advocates have seized on the report, saying it proves that women’s health is suffering from draconian abortion bans, a point that anti-abortion advocates have dismissed as misinformation.
“We actually have tangible proof of something we already knew: Banning abortion can kill people,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Monday.
___ Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
