In September 2024, two stories came to light that have broken our hearts and made nightmares become reality. ProPublica has reported that
at least two women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died as a direct result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent abortion ban in Georgia, where both women lived.Amber Nicole Thurman's 6-year-old son lost his mother. Candi Miller's three children lost theirs; she had her 3-year-old daughter laying next to her when she died.
This is the cost of states' draconian abortion bans. The need for the medical procedure has not changed and abortions have not decreased; but the ways women receive them, and the process of handling complications, have become deadly.
Sign the petition and demand that Congress raise up the right to abortion as a constitutional amendment before any more people die.
Let's make one thing clear: abortion is healthcare. Banning a medical procedure will not make the need for abortions go away. A person's desire to end a pregnancy, which is a life-altering medical condition with countless risks and complications, is enough of a reason to provide an abortion, period.
In the cases of
Amber Nicole Thurman and
Candi Miller, abortion was part of a plan to keep them and their families, their children that depended on them, safe and thriving. Amber Nicole Thurman was a single mother with nursing school ahead of her; Candi Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension, and was told that her body likely could not withstand a fourth pregnancy.
But Georgia's near-total abortion ban turned a blind eye to these women's situations, and it killed them in the process.Both women died from complications from taking the abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, which have been proven to be overwhelmingly safe.
Complications like theirs are incredibly rare and are not fatal if treated in time. Amber Nicole Thurman sought help at a local hospital when her infection set in, and
medical staff watched her suffer for 20 hours while they waited for the extremely vague "life of the mother" exception to kick in so they could help her. They basically had to wait until she was close enough to death to perform surgery, but at that point, it was too late. She died at the hospital.Candi Miller was so terrified of the state's abortion ban that she sought to avoid doctors entirely, opting to take the similar route of abortion pills.
But when she suffered from a similar complication, she was too fearful to seek help -- her husband found her unresponsive in her bed next to her baby girl.Georgia's maternal mortality review committee deemed both of these deaths "preventable," but that is the least of it.
These deaths were at the hands of every anti-abortion lawmaker who would rather exert control over women's bodies than attempt to grasp the understanding that abortion. Is. Healthcare. These women's children deserve to still have their mothers with them, raising them, loving them. For policies that claim to want to protect children and families, this is a twisted, foreseeable outcome.
Both of these women died in 2022, the year that Roe v. Wade was overturned. The lag in the oversight committee's review, both in Georgia and across other states, means that this is only the tip of the iceberg. We will continue to hear more horrific stories of pregnant people dying because they were denied medical care by doctors whose hands were tied by the laws, or because they were too fearful that they would be prosecuted for murder if their pregnancy ended, as we have already seen happening to
some women.
We will not stop until the right to abortion is a protected, enshrined right in the laws of the United States.
We will continue to fight for justice for Amber Nicole Thurman, Candi Miller, and the still untold number of people who have died at the hands of hateful anti-abortion policies. We will devote ourselves to this work so that not a single other person dies because they were denied help.
Will you join us? Sign the petition to demand the right to abortion be enshrined in the United States Constitution!