Pro-life laws protect life

The Harris-Walz campaign and the left-wing media have recently exploited the tragic death of a 28-year-old mom, Amber Nicole Thurman, casting blame on Georgia’s pro-life law—even though that law did not prevent her treatment. Countering this false narrative, Thurman’s family is filing suit against Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Ga., where Thurman died. Her family blames the doctors for Thurman’s death, stating at a news conference that nothing in Georgia’s law “prevented them from saving her life.”

The Harris-Walz campaign sees abortion as its winning issue, and it has been peddling false information to stir up fear among women voters, insisting that pro-life laws may cost them their lives.

During last week’s vice presidential debate, Gov. Tim Walz blamed Thurman’s death on Georgia’s pro-life law. Vice President Kamala Harris has also exploited Thurman’s death, arguing that abortion restrictions mean “doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.” The media has been complicit. Breaking the story of Thurman’s death, the hard-left outlet ProPublica insinuated that Georgia’s pro-life law tied doctors’ hands and prevented them from providing prompt life-saving care. Other mainstream media outlets were happy to run with that narrative.

There’s just one problem. The narrative is false. Thurman’s family is correct. Georgia’s pro-life law did not apply to prohibit Thurman from receiving treatment. Her twins were already deceased and a dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure would not have taken their lives. Further, even if the law had applied, Georgia’s law—like every pro-life law in the nation—provides an exception that permits doctors to use any means necessary to save a mother’s life.

As the Thurman family’s lawsuit shows, there are serious questions as to why Amber Thurman died. She waited 20 hours in the hospital before receiving a D&C. She died during surgery. A state panel deemed Thurman’s death preventable and said that the hospital’s delay in providing surgery was a contributing factor in her death. But Georgia’s pro-life law is not at fault. Indeed, the doctors involved appear to have never suggested that Thurman’s care was delayed because of Georgia’s law.

This point has been driven home by the Thurman family’s lawsuit. At a news conference, Ben Crump, the high-profile civil rights attorney representing Thurman’s family, noted that Thurman had taken abortion drugs and retained some pregnancy tissue leading to a serious infection. “Even under Georgia law, the doctors had a duty to act to save Amber,” he said. “There was no viable fetus or anything that would have prevented them from saving her life while she suffered.”

Thurman’s family also alleges that the doctors failed to inform them about Thurman’s medical condition as they waited at the hospital. The family said they would have sought medical care elsewhere if they had understood that the doctors were waiting to perform a D&C surgery. “We would have done anything had we known, but we didn’t,” Amber Thurman’s mother, Shanette Williams, said.

Thurman’s death was tragic. It was also avoidable. The left insists that abortion drugs are not dangerous. And it insists that state pro-life laws endanger women’s lives. Neither proposition is true. Not only does every state authorize doctors to use whatever means necessary to save a mother’s life, but they also do not prevent treatment for a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy. And no pro-life law anywhere in the United States delays life-saving care. Rather, Thurman’s harm was caused by chemical abortion drugs and the Food and Drug Administration’s reckless actions that removed safeguards designed to protect women just like Amber Thurman.

Those drugs are not nearly as safe as the abortion industry would have you believe. They come with an FDA black box warning, and its own label says that roughly 1 in every 25 women goes to the emergency room with complications. In 2016, the FDA took away two of the required office visits and extended the gestational age to 10 weeks. And in 2021, the agency no longer required abortion drug providers to see the women taking the drugs in person. It eliminated the last remaining healthcare visit and the only opportunity for a healthcare professional to accurately assess gestational age (the farther along a pregnancy is, the more likely there are complications) and screen women for life-threatening conditions like ectopic pregnancies.

While the Democratic ticket and left-leaning journalists capitalize on the tragedy to push an agenda, it is the FDA’s reckless actions placing women’s lives in danger.