TThere are other names, but this is the one we know: Amber Thurman is the first woman whose death could have been prevented in connection with an abortion ban since Dobbs. Her name and story have become public through the reporting of Kavitha Surana of ProPublica details how Thurman, a 28-year-old Black mother of a young son who dreamed of becoming a nurse, died a painful, preventable death in Georgia after doctors at a hospital there refused to perform a simple procedure that could have saved her life — because the law didn’t allow it.
The story underscores the reality of abortion bans, which—even in states like Georgia, with supposed exceptions for maternal health—effectively impose death sentences on women who terminate their pregnancies or who experience serious complications. They force doctors to choose between medical best practices and their own legal protections—and in the process treat women’s lives as alarmingly disposable.
Thurman, who lived in Georgia, died just weeks after her state’s abortion ban went into effect. She had just achieved a new level of stability for herself and her young son when she discovered she was pregnant with twins in 2022. Because her pregnancy was farther along than her state’s gestational age limit, she took a road trip to North Carolina with her best friend, where a clinic gave her abortion pills. Abortion pills have a very low risk of complications, but rare problems do occur. In Thurman’s case, not all of the pregnancy tissue had been removed from her uterus, and she arrived at a Georgia emergency room with bleeding, pain and plummeting blood pressure — telltale signs of infection.
Thurman could have been cured with a D&C, or dilation and curettage, a procedure in which the cervix is widened to create an opening through which instruments can be inserted to empty the contents of a uterus. The procedure is a popular form of abortion, but it’s also a routine part of miscarriage and other gynecological care. If the tissue had been removed promptly, she likely would have been fine: A D&C requires no special equipment and takes only about 15 minutes.
But Georgia’s abortion ban prohibited the D&C procedure, making it a felony to perform except in cases of treating a “spontaneous” or “naturally occurring” miscarriage. Because Thurman had taken abortion pills, it was illegal to treat her miscarriage. She suffered in a hospital bed for 20 hours, developing sepsis and beginning to experience organ failure. By the time Georgia doctors were finally willing to treat her, it was too late.
We do not know how many other women have died because of abortion bans. Such cases are often shrouded in secrecy, stigma, and confidentiality. And few families, let alone those grieving the loss of vibrant, loving young women, are willing to subject themselves to the smears and scrutiny that coming forward about deaths because of abortion bans inevitably brings.
But we also won’t know because the states where these deaths occur have no incentive to disclose them. Thurman’s death was deemed preventable by a state commission on maternal mortality. But it was only ProPublica’s reporting that made the cause of her death public. Even her family wasn’t told that Amber could have been saved: the state didn’t bother to tell them, and they learned it from the ProPublica reporter.
But even if we knew all the names of those killed by abortion bans, we still wouldn’t be able to comprehend the full extent of what has been taken from us. Every life—every woman’s life—is a world of possibilities: these negligent homicides to which the law sentences women like Amber obliterate those worlds.
Amber will never fulfill her dream of going to nursing school. Her best friend, Ricaria Baker, who drove her to the clinic in North Carolina, will never laugh with her again. Her mother has lost a child. Her son, who was six when Thurman died, will grow up without his mother: she will never know the man he will become, and he will never understand her as an adult.
All this because the self-interest of cynical Republican politicians, the saccharine, misogynistic sentimentality of the anti-abortion movement, and the short-sighted bigotry of six Supreme Court justices – Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and John Roberts – were deemed more important than her life, her dreams, her ambitions, and all the love her family had for her.
We know that there are almost certainly other women like Thurman. We may never know their stories, their names. But we know that we are worse off without them; we know that they deserved better; we know that their lives mattered—more than politics and more than other people’s religions. We can pray for those who loved them, and we can fight for those who come after. And we can also hope that Amber Thurman’s face will haunt the nightmares of those responsible. I know it will haunt mine.