Tag: abortion bans
Two Georgia Moms Were The First Women Killed By Abortion Bans

Two Georgia Moms Were The First Women Killed By Abortion Bans

Amber Thurman was a beautiful 28 year-old single mom in Atlanta with a beaming smile and an adorable six year -old son. She was a medical assistant with big plans to become a nurse.

But on August 20, 2022 she was dead, her uterus ravaged by a sepsis infection from an incomplete abortion. For 20 hours doctors at an Atlanta hospital delayed providing her with a life-saving dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure. By the time surgeons got her into the operating room, they were racing to try to save her life.

Just two weeks before that, Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp had. signed the state’s new “Heartbeat” abortion ban into law and announced that he was “overjoyed” that the ban would keep Georgia women “safe” and “healthy.”

Abortions could no longer be practiced in the state after a fetal heartbeat was detected, usually around six weeks, unless a woman was a victim of rape or incest or at risk of dying. The criminal penalty for medical providers who didn’t adhere to the strict guidelines was up to 10 years in prison and the revocation of their medical licenses.

The result for for Amber who arrived by ambulance after vomiting up blood and passing out at home, was that she didn’t didn’t quickly receive what had just recently been a routine D & C to clear her uterus. Her case was now a frightening hot potato for the doctors at the hospital.

Was she close enough to death to meet the new law’s requirement when her white blood count and her blood pressure fell dangerously low? How about when antibiotics weren’t enough to curb her “acute sepsis’ infection? Or when she became at risk for bleeding out? Or when her vital organs began to fail?

When was she close enough to death to qualify for a legal abortion under Georgia’s ban?

By the time the hospital physicians believed they were meeting the new law’s standard, Amber died on the operating table.

This loving young mother tragically became the first known American woman to die from a Trump abortion ban less than two months after Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022 by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

It only took two months.

However, her “preventable” death has just now became public more than two years later, when the ProPublica news outlet published the news after they obtained a report from the official Georgia state committee which investigates maternal deaths.

The committee which reports to the state’s Department of Health conducted a two year examination of the circumstances of Amber’s death which followed a rare complication from her two-pill abortion medication regime.

She received the pills when she drove to a North Carolina clinic four hours away, where abortion was still legal. Only 32 deaths have been linked to medication abortion pills between 2000 and 2022 and almost 6,000,000 American women have used them. They are considered safer than Viagra.

Unfortunately in Amber’s case, the pills failed to expel all the fetal contents from her uterus. It’s because the young woman didn’t receive the known standard of care -- the D & C -- quickly for her dire condition that the committee ruled that her death was “preventable.”

Now make no mistake -- this is what America’s women and those who love them must accept. Abortions bans cause young, healthy women to die. Death is now a risk for ANY pregnancy in the 22 states that have enacted the Trump bans.

And if the former president is re-elected on November 5, death will be a chance that every woman of reproductive age will take in America every time she decides to get pregnant or accidentally becomes pregnant.

That’s because Donald Trump -- no matter how many times he tries to confuse you about his stance on abortion -- WILL end it nationally, just as his Christian nationalist and evangelical followers have demanded.

You must have noticed how Trump is proudly crowing that HE’s The One who was able to “kill Roe V Wade” after 50 years. HE’s the one who appointed the three ultra right ring judges that he knew would do it. He promised to do it and he did!

If Trump and ‘pro life’ zealot JD Vance are elected, abortion in America is over.

If the pair can do it legislatively they will. If not, they’ll follow their Project 2025 handbook and ‘backdoor’ their ban. Their compliant Justice Department will enforce the 1873 Comstock Act, preventing the transportation of any abortion medications or surgical equipment across state lines.

Then on top of that, Trump’s obedient appointed FDA chief will withdraw the abortions pills as well as several forms of popular birth control from the market.

Done.

Women like Amber and Texans Amanda Zurawski, Kate Cox, Dr. Austin Dennard, and Madysyn Anderson, Tennessean Allie Phillips and Floridian Anya Cook and millions of women in the 22 Trump abortion ban states already know what it’s like to have no right to make decisions about their bodies.

They’ve been forced to flee to other states for abortions of unviable babies to save their own lives. They’ve lost their fertility after sepsis ravaged their reproductive organs when their water broke at 18 weeks. They’ve been left to bleed out in public restrooms after miscarriages until they were close enough to death for doctors to legally treat them .

Meanwhile in Amber’s state of Georgia, OBGYNs are practicing “under an element of fear," as Dr. Didi Saint Louis, an Atlanta OBGYN, confirms to me. “You don’t know what situation you might encounter that could land you in jail or cause you to lose your medical license.”

“I shouldn’t have to be fearing that I will go to jail when I’m treating patients. I can see why women would be afraid to seek care and to be honest about their situations so we can treat them as effectively as possible,” says the doctor, who has been practicing for more than 20 years. “Some women don’t know what the law is. It’s confusing.”

She stresses that since Georgia’s abortion ban was enacted, doctors feel like “we have our hands tied behind our backs.” And while she doesn’t understand why the hospital and doctor who treated Amber delayed urgent care for so long, she explains that after the law was enacted “we were uncertain and confused about how to interpret the law and how we could provide care.”

“We were scrambling to understand it.”

She says the abortion ban adds delays to the care of patients with complications, miscarriages, incomplete abortions, and other conditions which require consultations with hospital leadership, risk managers, and lawyers before proceeding.

“Sometimes it makes it difficult to practice medicine.” in Georgia admits the doctor who is a member of the Committee to Protect Health Care’s National Reproductive Freedom Task Force.

And sometimes she has to tell pregnant patients with serious health risks that they may have to leave the state to get an abortion.’

An Atlanta mom of three, 41, Candi Miller, didn’t leave the state when she accidentally got pregnant again. She suffered from debilitating lupus, diabetes and hypertension. To save her life, she ordered abortion pills online, but like Amber she tragically didn’t expel all he fetal tissue from her uterus.

When the excruciating pain set in from an infection she was too terrified by the state’s new abortion ban to see a doctor. She suffered for days taking strong painkillers until on November 12, her husband found her dead in her bed, next to her three year-old daughter.

An autopsy ruled that her death was caused by the combination of painkillers she consumed as she suffered.

Her son told ProPublica that the family believes she could have gotten “jail time “ if she was caught “trying to do anything to get rid of the baby.”

JD Vance just told a rally that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wadewas a “victory” and that “the Republican Party is proud to be the ‘pro life’ and ‘pro family’ party."

Tell that to Amber and Candi’s children who lost their mothers.

When it takes two years to investigate the deaths of pregnant women, we should be prepared -- how many American women have already died?

Donald Trump asked his followers at a Long Island, New York rally on September 18, “What the hell do you have to lose?” if you vote for him.

If you’re a woman of reproductive age, the answer is clear: It could be your life.

Bonnie Fuller is a contributing writer to Courier Newsroom, Ms. magazine. and The Free Press covering politics and reproductive freedom. She is the former CEO of HollywoodLife.com and former editor-in-chief of US Weekly, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and YM magazines. This is reprinted with permission from Your Body, Your Choice, her free Substack newsletter.

Danziger Draws

Danziger Draws

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.

Nancy Mace

'We're Going To Lose Huge': Mace Warns Of GOP Wipeout Over Abortion (VIDEO)

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) warns that the GOP risks facing a wipeout at the polls in 2024 if her colleagues remain focused on passing strict state-level abortion bans rather than finding a “middle ground” on the issue.

Mace, a sometime Trump critic who survived reelection last year, sounded the alarm on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court chose to keep abortion pills legal, freezing a Trump-appointed federal judge’s ruling that restricted the drug.

Taking aim at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new six-week abortion ban legislation and a Republican bill in the South Carolina legislature that proposes “punishment by death” for women who undergo abortions, Mace said the GOP was sending "the wrong message heading into '24."

The Republican insisted that the anti-abortion extremists within her party were out of touch with their constituents, a majority she contended didn’t want abortion severely restricted or outlawed.

"We're going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities and finding that middle ground. The vast majority of people want some sort of gestational limits, not at nine months but somewhere in the middle," Mace told ABC anchor Martha Raddatz.

"They want exceptions for rape and incest — they want women to have access to birth control,” she added.

Indeed, the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National poll, released Monday, found that two-thirds of Americans (64 percent), including a majority of Republicans, opposed banning medication abortion — that is, the use of a prescription pill to end a pregnancy.

A CBS News/YouGov poll released over a week before found that 69 percent of Americans who support abortion wanted the Biden Administration to ignore court rulings seeking to end widespread access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

Americans’ broad support for abortion after the Dobbs decision has remained the same since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade last June, with a Pew Research Center poll showing that support rose from 61 percent in March 2022 (before the ruling) to 62 percent in July (after the ruling).

Mace’s comments offered a window into the divide within the GOP over abortion bans, an issue Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, recognize was central to the party’s historic underperformance in the 2022 midterms.

TheWashington Postreported last Thursday that Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, urged her party’s candidates in private to “address abortion” before it damaged them politically.

“You have to address it, not avoid it,” McDaniel reportedly said. “And then you can talk about other things.”

Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway implored Republican donors and candidates to infuse “compassion” into their discussions on abortion and emphasize the need for exceptions in abortion legislation.

During her ABC interview, Mace suggested that anywhere but the fringe of anti-abortion extremism were “commonsense positions that we can take and still be pro-life.”

"I saw what happened after Roe v. Wade because I represent a very purple district, as purple as this dress, and I saw the sentiment change dramatically," Mace said. "And as Republicans, we need to read the room on this issue."

Mace also argued that dancing around or wholly ignoring the issue of abortion wasn’t a position Republicans should take, considering the widespread support for abortion among voters.

"We've buried our heads in the sand. We're afraid to talk about it. Because we're afraid, we want to go to the extreme corners of this issue. But that's not where the vast majority of Americans are right now. And we've got to show compassion, especially to victims who've been raped," said Mace, who has often shared her experience of being sexually assaulted at 16.

Mark Robinson

Christian Nationalist Instantly Leads In North Carolina GOP Governor's Primary

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced Saturday that he would seek the Republican nomination for governor next year, a declaration that came a month after he told a church service that “God formed” him to fight against LGBTQ rights. His entry, however, had been anticipated for years, so much so that Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein preemptively attacked his likely opponent during his own campaign kickoff in January, warning in a video, “Robinson wants to tell you who you can marry, when you’ll be pregnant, and who you should hate.”

But while Stein has no intra-party opposition in his quest to succeed termed-out Gov. Roy Cooper, a fellow Democrat, Robinson will have some company in his primary. State Treasurer Dale Folwell announced a bid last month, while an advisor for former Rep. Mark Walker tells the News & Observer that he’ll also join the race in May. Folwell, who has trailed Robinson by 50 points or more in the few polls we’ve seen, acknowledged he’s the “underdog” while still arguing, “What I am going to talk about is how do we talk about problems without attacking people.” Walker also seems undeterred, despite his own weak third-place finish in last year’s Senate primary.

Robinson, who would be the Tar Heel State’s first Black chief executive, was a political unknown until 2018, when he became a conservative celebrity after giving a speech protesting the cancellation of a gun show in Greensboro. The former furniture factory worker went on to take the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor in his first bid for office two years later. He beat state Rep. Yvonne Lewis Holley 52-48 in the general election despite standing by his past litany of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and transphobic screeds.

Robinson went on to make news over the following years with more bigoted comments. His most infamous remarks may have been those he offered in a 2021 address to a Baptist church. “There is no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality—any of that filth," he said. "And yes, I called it filth.” Robinson refused to apologize and has continued to spout hateful rhetoric in the years since. “We are called to be led by men,” he told congregants at another church just last year. “God sent women out … when they had to do their thing, but when it was time to face down Goliath, [He] sent David. Not Davita, David.”

The Republican frontrunner showed absolutely no interest in changing in the lead-up to his new campaign, declaring in January that “abortion is not compatible with this nation, the same way slavery was not compatible with this nation.” This statement came just months after Robinson confirmed that his wife had an abortion in 1989, just prior to their marriage, saying, “It's because of this experience and our spiritual journey that we are so adamantly pro-life.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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