‘Women are dying’: New abortion row erupts in the United States

A mother’s horrific death in the United States has sparked a new debate over abortion, with Kamala Harris seeking to pounce.

A fresh row has erupted over abortion policy in the United States, with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris accusing her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, of being responsible for women “dying”.

This latest development in America’s abortion debate was sparked by a story on the investigative news site ProPublica. The publication identified two women who had died because “they couldn’t access legal abortions and medical care” after the United States’ Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade.

That landmark 1973 decision, which made abortion legal until the point of foetal viability (at about 24 weeks of pregnancy), had underpinned abortion rights in the US for almost 50 years. In 2022 the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, which is in place because of three justices appointed by Mr Trump, nullified it.

As a consequence, strict abortion bans have been imposed across much of the country, with some states governed by the Republicans barring the practice from as little as six weeks into pregnancy, when most women don’t even know they’re pregnant.

Former president Donald Trump. Picture: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP

‘It was too late’: Woman’s horrific death

ProPublica’s story focused on a woman named Amber Nicole Thurman, who lived in Atlanta, Georgia. The state, whose Governor Brian Kemp is a conservative Republican, is among those which now ban abortion from six weeks onwards.

Because of that ban, Ms Thurman had to travel interstate, to North Carolina, to obtain abortion pills. After returning home, she suffered a rare and dangerous complication: her body had failed to expel all of the foetal tissue.

When she vomited blood and passed out, Ms Thurman’s partner called emergency services. She ended up at a hospital in Georgia requiring what would normally be a routine procedure, called a dilation and curettage, to clear the material from her uterus.

But Georgia had made the procedure a felony-level crime, punishable by up to a decade in jail for any doctor who performed it.

“Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her six-year-old son,” ProPublica reported.

“Doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.

“It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.”

Ms Thurman, now deceased, and her six-year-old son.

Even at the point when Ms Thurman was “breathing rapidly” and “at risk of bleeding out”, her doctors merely increased her antibiotics.

“Instead of performing the newly criminalised procedure, they continued to gather information and dispense medicine,” reported ProPublica.

Ms Thurman was admitted to the hospital at 6.51pm. She wasn’t taken to an operating theatre until 2pm the next day.

Her last words, spoken to her mother, were: “Promise me you’ll take care of my son.” She was already the mother of a six-year-old boy.

Her heart stopped during the surgery.

Asked for comment on Ms Thurman’s case, and that of another woman who had died due to lack of medical care, Mr Kemp’s office dismissed ProPublica’s reporting as a “fearmongering campaign”.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. Picture: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images via AFP

Ms Thurman leaves behind a six-year-old son, who will now grow up without his mother.

A government committee has since concluded that her death was “preventable”, should not have happened, and that the delay in performing her D&C operation played a “large” role.

“Committees like the one in Georgia, set up in each state, often operate with a two-year lag behind the cases they examine, meaning that experts are only now beginning to delve into deaths that took place after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion,” ProPublica explained.

Abortion is a lightning rod issue in the presidential campaign, with Mr Trump’s role in facilitating the end of Roe vs Wade a frequent point of criticism among Democrats.

During his first term in the White House, Mr Trump appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

That shifted the balance of the court, decisively. All three voted to overturn Roe.

Mr Trump and Ms Barrett in October of 2020, shortly before the presidential election, when she was appointed to the Supreme Court. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

In this year’s presidential campaign, Mr Trump has been caught between claiming credit for the demise of Roe, which is popular among conservatives, and distancing himself from strict abortion bans, which are deeply unpopular among the majority of Americans.

Ms Harris’s campaign seized on ProPublica’s story to hammer home its point on the issue.

“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” the Vice President said in a statement.

“This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down. In more than 20 states, Trump abortion bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care. Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again.

“Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying.

“These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”

Vice President Kamala Harris. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Ms Harris alleged, not for the first time, that if re-elected Mr Trump would sign a national abortion ban, imposing stricter laws across the entire country, rather than just in Republican-run states.

Mr Trump has sought to avoid committing one way or the other on that possibility, insisting that no such ban would pass through Congress and reach his desk in the White House during a second term – making his view on a national ban irrelevant.

As things stand, Mr Trump’s party controls the House of Representatives, and is poised to gain control of the Senate as well in November’s elections. Should he become president next year, and should Congress pass a national ban, he will need to make a choice.

“Look, this is an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years,” Mr Trump said when asked about abortion during last week’s presidential debate against Ms Harris.

“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states,” he said.

“Each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people now. It’s not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it.

“I did something that nobody thought was possible. The states are now voting. What (Ms Harris) says is an absolute lie. And as far as the abortion ban, no, I’m not in favour of (the) abortion ban. But it doesn’t matter because this issue has been taken over by the states.”

Mr Trump during the debate. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

One of the debate’s moderators, Linsey Davis, sought to clarify whether Mr Trump would use his powers as president to veto a national abortion ban if one landed on his desk.

“Well I won’t have to,” Mr Trump replied.

“These horrific realities will multiply,” Ms Harris said of a second Trump presidency in her statement today.

“We must pass a law to restore reproductive freedom. When I am president, I will proudly sign it into law. Lives depend on it.”

Originally published as ‘Women are dying’: New abortion row erupts in the United States