The mother of a Georgia woman who died from complications from an abortion two weeks after the state’s restrictive law took effect in 2022 said the most difficult part for her to reconcile is that her daughter’s death was preventable.
Amber Thurman, whose death was first reported by ProPublica earlier this week, died in August 2022 following a 20-hour wait for treatment at a metro Atlanta hospital after traveling to North Carolina to get an abortion. A review by the state’s maternal mortality review board determined Thurman’s death was preventable, ProPublica reported.
Thurman’s mother, Shanette Williams, appeared with Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey in an event livestreamed from Michigan on Thursday evening. Williams said she did not initially want to share the story of her daughter’s death with the world, but said it was important for people to know Thurman was not a statistic.
“Women around the world, people around the world, need to know that this was preventable,” Williams said.
It was the first time Williams has spoken publicly since details of her daughter’s death were released earlier this week.
Democrats are intensifying their focus on GOP positions on abortion as November nears, with polls in Georgia and other battleground states showing broad support for expanding access to the procedure. Harris has consistently tied the bans in Georgia and other states to former Republican President Donald Trump.
“This story is a story that is, sadly, not the only story of what has been happening since these bans have taken place,” Harris said. “The former president chose three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade, and they did as he intended. And in state after state, including (Georgia), these abortion bans have passed.”
Maya Prabhu
Maya Prabhu
Harris is scheduled to appear in Atlanta on Friday in an event announced shortly after the story of Thurman’s death became public. She is expected to address abortion laws and the deaths of Thurman and Candi Miller, another Georgia woman who died while trying to manage her own post-abortion care at home after the state’s law took effect.
Georgia bans most abortions once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically around six weeks of pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant. The state allows later abortions to be performed in the cases of rape, incest, fetal anomaly or to save the life of the mother.
According to the ProPublica report, Thurman sought the hospital’s help after traveling to North Carolina for an abortion pill in 2022. She was about nine weeks pregnant with twins at the time. When the abortion didn’t complete, Thurman developed sepsis. Twenty hours after she arrived at the emergency room in Henry County, her heart stopped on the operating table, ProPublica reported.
Natalie Griffith, a 15-year-old Apalachee High School student, also appeared with Harris and Winfrey during the event. Griffith was one of nine people injured earlier this month when a 14-year-old boy shot and killed two students and two teachers at the Winder high school.
Griffith was joined by her parents at the virtual town hall. Marilda Griffith, Natalie’s mother, cried as she told the story of fearing for her daughter’s safety after learning about the shooting at the high school in Winder.
“You don’t know what it feels like until it’s you,” Griffith said through tears. “You know a lot of people that are here, mothers. What are we doing about this? What are we doing? Let’s make sure that everybody listens and make sure that everybody hears. The whole world needs to hear that we women, who have our children, we have a job. That job is (to) protect.”
Harris said it’s a “false choice” that the issue of gun violence has been reduced to either being in favor of the Second Amendment or wanting to take everyone’s guns.
“I’m in favor of the Second Amendment and I’m in favor of assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red-flag laws. I’m not trying to take everyone’s gun away,” she said. “But the fact is that our children are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential and exploring the wonders of the world, (but) some part of their brain realizes somebody could bust through that classroom door with an assault weapon.”
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