Opinion: This is Exactly What We Warned You About

Her name was Amber Nicole Thurman. She was 28 years old. She had a 6-year-old son. She wanted to go to nursing school. She and her son had just moved into a new apartment in Georgia when she found out she was pregnant. She didn’t want to upset her life, which had just become stable, so she decided to have an abortion. Thurman opted for a medication abortion using Mifepristone but had a rare complication in the process where she was unable to expel all of the fetal tissue from her body. She needed a procedure called a dilation and curettage (D&C for short), commonly performed after both abortions and miscarriages. However, Georgia had recently banned abortion with very vague lines as to what qualifies as an abortion and made it so that doctors who perform abortions after six weeks could face prison time. Thurman waited 20 hours for care but by the time she was eventually given the operation, she had developed septic shock and died shortly after. Amber Thurman wasn’t a statistic. She was a mother. She had dreams of becoming a nurse, of building a future for her son—and now those dreams are buried along with her. Her death is not an exception—it’s becoming the rule. The fetus wasn’t even viable, but she still was denied healthcare she desperately needed. That is the effect of abortion bans. Her fate is a devastating reminder that these laws don't just strip away a woman’s right to choose; they gamble with her life.

Abortion bans don’t just risk the health of those who don’t want to have a child but also those who desperately do. Kate Cox was thrilled to learn that she was pregnant for the third time. When she was 18 weeks pregnant, Cox received a call from her doctor. Expecting to hear the sex of her upcoming child, Cox was told that her pregnancy was at a significantly increased risk of Trisomy 18, a genetic condition that is fatal in nearly all cases. Further screenings definitively showed that the fetus had Trisomy 18 and would die within hours of birth, if not in utero. Continuing on with the pregnancy would put Cox’s future ability to have children at risk. She and her husband made the excruciating decision to have an abortion so as not to put the future child through severe suffering and risk Cox’s health further. However, in Texas, where the Coxes lived, abortion was illegal except in very urgent and dangerous health emergencies. The only route for Cox would be to file a restraining order against the fetus inside of her and despite a Texas judge granting her the order, the Texas supreme court overturned the ruling. Cox desperately wanted this child and now not only would she have to watch them suffer and die, she would lose her ability to have more children. So, Cox fled to New Mexico, where she was able to get the abortion she so desperately needed.

There is a misconception among people that exceptions for the life of the mother make it so that women are safeguarded from these things. That is just not the way it works in practice. The guidelines as to what counts as life-threatening are often so unclear that they prevent women from being able to access care when faced with the inevitable dangerous conditions until they actually develop them. Saying that a woman would have developed sepsis could easily be argued against in court so, in order to keep doctors safe, they have to wait until a woman has sepsis to give them treatment. Women are waiting. Waiting for infection. Waiting for the law to decide that they are “sick enough” to deserve care. Waiting for permission to live. Is that someone’s idea of protecting life?