CV NEWS FEED // A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) fact-checked Kamala Harris’s claim that Amber Thurman’s death shows that “Trump’s abortion bans” gravely endanger women.
Nicholas Tomaino, an assistant editorial features editor at the WSJ, wrote that both Harris and Walz have “exploit[ed] a tragedy to further a political narrative” against laws restricting abortion.
Thurman died of severe sepsis in 2022 after a botched abortion pill procedure. She had traveled to North Carolina to undergo a surgical abortion, but arrived late and was prescribed mifepristone and misoprostol. She drove home after taking the first pill but became gravely ill at her home in Georgia.
She went to a hospital in Atlanta, where “an ultrasound showed possible tissue in her uterus.” Tomaino stated that she needed a surgical abortion procedure, but the doctors, diagnosing her with sepsis, waited 20 hours after her admission to perform the surgery. She died after the procedure.
Tomaino pointed to several complicating factors in Thurman’s story, including the inherent dangers of the abortion pill, the poor quality of the hospital she was admitted into, and the fact that Georgia’s laws did not forbid the care that Thurman needed.
“Thurman’s death affirms what anti-abortion activists have argued: that the two-pill abortion regimen is far more dangerous than its advocates claim,” Tomaino wrote.
He pointed to the FDA’s 2016 changes on mifepristone regulations, when the organization allowed non-physicians to prescribe the pill, stopped requiring follow-up appointments, and allowed the pill to be used up until 10 weeks gestation, instead of seven. In 2021, the FDA allowed “medical professionals” to prescribe mifepristone without an in-person evaluation of the patient.
Tomaino also wrote Medicare rates the hospital where Thurman died as two out of five stars. Medicare also reports that few patients, a mere 41%, with severe sepsis receive appropriate care at the hospital.
“Patient reviews report lower-than-average satisfaction with the hospital’s cleanliness, responsiveness and communication,” Tomaino continued. He speculated that the hospital may have been understaffed.
Finally, Tomaino stated that Georgia’s abortion ban would not have prevented Thurman from receiving appropriate care. While the law specifically forbids abortion, which it defines as causing death of an unborn human child with a detectable heartbeat, Thurman’s children had already died through the abortion pill.
“Even if they hadn’t been, however, the law allows for immediate treatment ‘when a physician determines, in reasonable medical judgment, that a medical emergency exists’ or that the ‘pregnancy is medically futile,’” Tomaino wrote.
Tomaino concluded that Harris and Walz’s claim that Trump ultimately caused Thurman’s death “grossly ignores the facts, stokes needless fear among vulnerable women and medical professionals alike, and exploits a young woman who tragically died.”