Amber Nicole Thurman’s death from an infection in 2022 is believed to be the first confirmed maternal fatality linked to post-Roe bans.
Reproductive justice advocates have been warning for more than two years that the end of Roe v. Wade would lead to surge in maternal mortality among patients denied abortion care—and that the increase was likely to be greatest among low-income women of color. Now, a new report by ProPublica has uncovered the first such verified death. A 28-year-old medical assistant and Black single mother in Georgia died from a severe infection after a hospital delayed a routine medical procedure that had been outlawed under that state’s six-week abortion ban.
Amber Nicole Thurman’s death, in August 2022, was officially deemed “preventable” by a state committee tasked with reviewing pregnancy-related deaths. Thurman’s case is the first time a preventable abortion-related death has come to public attention since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana reported.
Now, “we actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the abortion-rights group Reproductive Freedom for All, during a call with media. “It cannot go on.”
I don’t want anyone to interpret this to mean that I think it was in any way OK that this woman died, but I do want to point out what I see as an objective bias here.
According to the National Libary of Medicine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554338/
108 women died from complications related to legal abortions during a 12 year period between 1998 and 2010, for an average of 9 per year. Where are these stories on the front page?
This is a story that is posted to elicit an emotional reaction rather than a honest attempt to examine whether there is actual recorded medical evidence that more women are dying as a result of this policy.
Edit:
- Post citing scientific data -11.
- “Religious people should be locked in asylums” +10.
Says a lot about this community.
sorry you’re being downvoted, but i support scientific data AND putting religious people in asylums.
I could care less about being downvoted, but it made me realize that even people who claim to be interested in objective truth and facts are no different than the religious people who they mock for ignoring scientific evidence for things like global warming. Everyone just wants to reaffirm what they already believe.
“Still a man, he hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” -Paul Simon
Okay, I normally try not to be this guy, but in this particular situation, I believe a little pedantry is called for. You mean that you couldn’t care less. If you could care less, that means you do care at least a little bit, which is not the point you’re trying to make.
On the one hand, you have some women dying of complications arising from an elective procedure that they chose to have, based either on medical necessity or other factors. On the other hand you have a woman in need of medical care that she wished to have, and was denied, due to her reproductive autonomy being denied, then dying as a result.
Yet you have a hard time distinguishing what makes these things different?
No, what I have a problem with is using a sample size of 1 as evidence of an epidemic and the perception that no women die from legal abortion procedures.
Also, from the report: “In 20 of the 108 cases, the abortion was performed as a result of a severe medical condition where continuation of the pregnancy threatened the woman’s life.”
I point this out because another misconception is that you can always save the woman’s life with an abortion if it is threatened by the pregnancy.
and the perception that no women die from legal abortion procedures.
I don’t know anyone who has edit: [ever expressed] that perception. Anecdotal I know, but I’m skeptical it’s a common belief among adults of voting age.
using a sample size of 1 as evidence of an epidemic
I don’t see that word, nor any language that conveys that impression in the article.
I do see this:
At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.
That seems pretty straightforward and unsensationalized to me.
It is literally the highlighted quote in the article: “we actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people.”
This is true as evidenced by the story, but what is also true is that abortions also kill people. So the question should be is it a net positive or a net negative? I don’t see this being examined in any objective and scientific way.
This is kind of just a bad argument.
Nobody is arguing that an abortion can save a woman from all consequences.
Nobody is arguing that death is impossible as a result of abortion.
But when somebody dies because something prevented them from getting a procedure that would have been highly likely to save them, that doesn’t come into conflict with the possibility of death from the procedure. It’s a matter of personal choice.
Especially considering the maternal mortality rate (# of deaths per 100,000 live births) is 17.4, while the case fatality rate for abortions (# of deaths per 100,000 legal induced abortions) is just 0.45
Now imagine how much higher that rate gets when abortions are performed illegally because legislation like this stops safe abortions from being possible, without curbing demand.
Yes, people die from abortions. Yes, people die from pregnancy. Yes, this woman could have died from the abortion procedure even if she was able to get it.
But her chance of death was significantly lower if she had been capable of getting an abortion, which she was not.
A lot of pro-birth people argue “obviously things are different if the mother’s life is in danger”, but that ignores that there’s often nothing obvious or definite about the line between “safe” and dangerous. Doctors are erring on the side of caution to avoid potential lawsuits and even jail time, and this is the result. People bleeding out in parking lots, suffering irreversible damage to their body, and people dying.
I am pro-life in general, but that is a good point.
Pro life is not the right term. It’s much better to say you’re anti abortion than to pretend it’s about saving lives.
Not really. If I was anti abortion I wouldn’t be proponent of it in most cases. You are making shit up.
The only assumption he’s making is that, if you refer to yourself as “pro-life”, you mean what everyone else in America who calls themselves “pro-life” means. It’s a reasonable assumption, I mean, that’s the way words work.
Your body, their choice.
Just look at what pharma had gotten away with over the last four years. “Undergo this medical procedure or kiss your civil liberties goodbye!”
“Inject this experimental substance (with known severe side effects) into your body or lose your job”
I was honestly expecting to receive a lemmy flavored beatdown for that comment.
I am of the persuasion that even if we consider the products to be safe and tested, coercion is still the wrong way to go about it.
I did not reject the pharma shots because it was allegedly unsafe or experimental, but because I don’t believe the threat it claims to prevent against represents a substantial enough risk to warrant all the destructive measures we’ve all been forced to endure.
Hey, look, it’s
Typhoid MaryCOVID Larry, who wants all the privileges of society yet none of the responsibilities. If you don’t want to uphold the social contract, I’m okay with it. Get out.Ah, like clockwork.
So I’m supposed to just buy your anti-intellectualism rhetoric? Why should I trust your dumb ass over an expert in the field?
I’m always lamenting how sides reach extreme positions because nobody talks to eachother anymore. So instead of taking another potshot back at you, I will be genuine for a moment (a rarity, if you peruse my post history) and lay out my rationale.
- I am unconvinced that the purported threat amounted to anything more than a seasonal flu.
- Dreadful predictions and models were drummed up early on in the interests of industry and investors seeking to create “healthy new markets for vaccines”.
- I do not know anyone, or of anyone, in the flesh who had fallen ill or died in a way as the disease was described. Only through screens, had anyone ever seemed to hear of it. Take away the screens, and one might not have even known that there was a supposed disease of medieval proportions.
- I was among throngs of crowds in major cities during the height of the issue (protests/rallies) and never fell sick, nor had anyone I’d known also in those crowds.
- Upon closer examination, experts (I mean the experts™) often held conflict of interest or were outright placed in public eye by aforementioned industry and investor interests. To the degree that I and others now joke about the sloganeering.
We are going on five years from those events. I don’t have any delusions that any amount of argumentation or persuasion will be able to swing either of us toward the other’s view. And yet, here we are.
This ignores that, until we had an effective treatment program and mass vaccinations, it had a mortality rate of about 20 times that of the flu. After effective treatment plans, vaccines, antivirals, etc. it was brought more in line with the flu. 0.5% mortality means that you need to know 200 people who got sick to know someone who died. This also ignores all the people we saw online who would deny their family members died of COVID. Having had friends working in hospitals, COVID deaths were happening. And let’s be honest, how many people have you personally run into who died of the flu, yet that happens every year. We just shrug and move on. They were old, it was their time. And if it was your child, it was devastating, but could you even relate if your friend’s infant had died of the flu?
People historically are really bad at statistical analysis, so tiny risks over huge occurrences are dismissed, and most people will get away with it so we feel like the bad outcomes didn’t happen at all. But they do, and they did, and now a lot more people died than had to because people couldn’t stay home when they were sick, or wear a mask in public, or not cough in other people’s faces because it’s just a flu. And I honestly can’t show any respect to people who think their life is so much more important than anyone else’s that they can’t show a little respect and just try to not risk a stranger’s health because it might be a little uncomfortable.
‘Pro-life’ my ass
I propose to stop using “pro-life” and “pro-choice”. Instead use “pro-quantity” and “pro-quality”.
Stop using “prolife” as a term.
It frames their stance positively, call it what it is: “anti-choice”
“Forced-breeders”
They are pro-life, just not your life.
No they are not pro life, and they should never be allowed to use that term or make that claim without protests.
They are anti-abortion. That is as far as it goes. They don’t care about giving an expecting mother pre-natal care if she can’t afford it. The certainly don’t give a shit about post-natal care. And if there’s something wrong with her baby an they both die? That’s “god’s will.”
All they care about is making and keeping abortion illegal. It’s that binary of an issue for them and it’s sick.
It’s so fucking comical to me too that they call it “god’s will” when children die of the most horrifying, excruciating diseases imagnable long before they’re capable of understanding what’s happening, but when a pregnant woman makes an informed decision not to die during childbirth over a shrimp living inside her taco, that’s a bridge too far, and the all-mighty creator and ruler of the universe is very disappointed in you for killing one of his children when he was powerless to stop it.
Sweetie, maybe your fairytale sugar daddy’s will isn’t all that benevolent. 💀
You would think that an omnipotent being could just prevent any abortion from happening if he didn’t want them to happen.
No, no, you see it’s free will. Which makes total sense, because god can’t possibly foresee what we’re going to do, which is a problem omniscient beings definitely struggle with. Or if he can foresee what we’re going to do and he is omniscient, then he’s not omnibenevolent because he had exact foreknowledge of what was going to happen and let it anyway. After all, why “test” if you already know the precise outcome if not to watch people suffer for fun? If you need people to learn lessons, why can’t you just magically teach them those lessons? And if you’re not capable of this, how are you omnipotent?
Pick at most two of the three; you can’t have all of them.
I don’t think everyone ever claimed the Abrahamic god to be benevolent.
