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CV NEWS FEED // Medical negligence, pro-abortion misinformation, and the chemical abortion pill, not abortion bans, led to the deaths of two women from Georgia, various pro-life leaders recently argued.
Amber Thurman and Candi Miller were both Georgia residents who, in 2022, took chemical abortion pills and afterwards suffered complications that required surgical intervention. However, both passed away during or before the necessary surgeries. Some have claimed that the women died because of Georgia’s pro-life laws, but some pro-life advocates are contesting this claim.
“We mourn the senseless loss of Amber, Candi, and their unborn children,” stated Katie Daniel, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, in a September 18 press release:
We agree their deaths were preventable. But let’s be absolutely clear: Georgia’s law and every pro-life state law calls on doctors to act in circumstances just like theirs. If abortion advocates weren’t spreading misinformation and confusion to score political points, it’s possible the outcome would have been different.
Amber and Candi deserve to be thriving together with their children today. We stand with state attorneys general who continue to fight for women’s health and safety and we call on every state to take action against deadly misinformation.
Amber Thurman
ProPublica published an article on September 16 claiming that abortion bans caused Thurman’s death by delaying the medical care she was in need of after taking chemical abortion pills. In 2022, Thurman, a Georgia resident who was 28, had taken mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-pill chemical abortion regimen.
ProPublica reported that after taking the chemical abortion pills, Thurman “had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.”
Doctors did not operate on Thurman for 20 hours. She passed away during the operation.
“Her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions,” ProPublica claimed. “Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.”
In an X post about Thurman, which currently has 9.6 million views, Vice President Kamala Harris recalled the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“This is exactly what we feared when Roe v. Wade was struck down,” the post reads. “In more than 20 states, Trump Abortion Bans prevent doctors from providing basic medical care.”
However, pro-life advocates denounced the doctors’ actions as medical malpractice and negligence.
Christian pro-life advocate Allie Beth Stuckey was among those who commented on Harris’ post to counter the claims. Stuckey called Harris’ post “Malicious disinformation.”
“As is too often the case [with chemical abortions], parts of the baby were left inside [Amber], which caused her to suffer from fatal sepsis,” Stuckey wrote. “Yes, she should have received a D&C and antibiotics. But that is not the fault of any Georgia law, which fully permits a D&C when the baby has already passed. She died because of the abortion pills and because of the negligence of doctors.”
In the SBA Pro-Life America press release, the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs said that Thurman’s case is “one of the most clear-cut cases of medical malpractice (based on the information available publicly) that we have ever seen.”
Georgia Right to Life Executive Director Zemmie Fleck also argued that pro-abortion misinformation contributed to the harm against Thurman.
“Georgia Right to Life does not want a single woman to go through horrendous agony or to potentially die because of an abortion,” Fleck said in a statement.
“However, the facts are that because of the misinformation, fear and political rhetoric the abortion industry is spreading, women are misguided, suffering and dying,” Fleck continued:
Tragically, Amber Thurman’s death is being misused and abused by high profile political figures to pressure the general public to believe that her death is a result of the Heartbeat Bill, or the L.I.F.E. Act, in Georgia.
Candi Miller
On September 18, ProPublica published an article about Miller. In the article, ProPublica claimed again that a recently passed Georgia law prohibited doctors from performing a D&C, except in rare cases.
In 2022, Miller, who suffered from lupus, diabetes, and hypertension, had taken chemical abortion pills from a Netherlands-based organization. Her family found that she had passed away in her bed after being in “excruciating pain” for days. Shortly before she died, at 41 years old, she had taken a mix of several drugs.
According to ProPublica, “An autopsy found unexpelled fetal tissue, confirming that the abortion had not fully completed. It also found a lethal combination of painkillers, including the dangerous opioid fentanyl.”
“Although Georgia courts have said women can’t be prosecuted for getting abortions, the state has sent mixed messages,” ProPublica reported:
While some state bans explicitly say women can’t be prosecuted, Georgia’s ban leaves open that possibility. In 2019, a district attorney on the outskirts of metro Atlanta called abortion “murder” and said women “should prepare for the chance that they could be criminally prosecuted for having an abortion.”
That was the understanding in Miller’s family.
In the SBA Pro-Life America press release, Ingrid Skop, an ob-gyn and vice president and director of medical affairs at Charlotte Lozier Institute, denounced pro-abortion misinformation surrounding pro-life laws and criminal prosecution.
“Candi’s family states she did not seek medical care because she was worried about prosecution, but every pro-life state law prohibits prosecution of women for seeking an abortion,” Skop said in a statement:
Intentional misinformation by pro-abortion media regarding criminal penalties and claims that abortion drugs are ‘safer than Tylenol’ frighten women so that they do not seek medical care when they suffer complications like severe pain and heavy bleeding. This misinformation is to blame for these women’s tragic deaths, not pro-life state laws protecting them and their unborn children.
Skop pointed out that the Food and Drug Administration has removed safeguards for the use of chemical abortion pills, such as requiring one in-person doctor visit.
This year, a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s removal of safeguards for mifepristone use reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In June, the Court ruled in favor of the FDA, asserting, according to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s ruling, that the plaintiffs lacked necessary standing, and that “[T]he federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.”
The ruling noted that the plaintiffs could take a different approach to challenging the FDA, such as through a legislative or regulatory process.
In the recent statement, Skop decried the danger of self-administered chemical abortion pills.
“The tragic deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller in Georgia demonstrate conclusively how dangerous medically unsupervised, ‘self-managed’ abortion drugs are, as we have been warning for years,” Skop said.
Chemical abortions linked to high risk of severe complications, ER visits
Women who take chemical abortion pills are at significantly higher risk of ending up in the emergency room with severe medical issues than women who have a surgical abortion, women who carry their pregnancy to term are, or women who have never been pregnant are, according to a study published in August.
As CatholicVote previously reported, the researchers found that from 2004 and 2015, the group of women who took chemical abortion pills had the highest percentage increase in ER visits of all the observed groups. The researchers found that the percentage of ER visits reported to involve severe medical issues also skyrocketed for women in the group that had taken chemical abortion pills.
