The Abortion Ban Killed Amber Thurman

Amber Thurman’s case is a death we can lay squarely at the feet of a particular law. She was 28 and worked as a medical assistant and had a 6-year-old son whom she loved to take to petting zoos and the beach. As was horribly predictable, in a country where Black women seek abortions at higher rates and die far more commonly from maternal-health complications, she was Black. She died because doctors in Georgia did not perform a routine procedure to remove tissue retained after a medication abortion, and she had to travel to North Carolina for care. Afterwards, she suffered a rare complication which can be treated with a routine procedure. She died because her home state of Georgia had made that routine procedure a felony.