By: Nicholas Tomaino – wsj.com – October 6, 2024

Harris and Walz exploit a tragedy to further a political narrative about ‘Trump abortion bans.’

His source was an article by Kavitha Surana of ProPublica. Ms. Surana reports that in August 2022, nine weeks pregnant with twins, Thurman made an appointment at a North Carolina clinic for a dilation-and-curettage procedure, or D&C, a surgical abortion. She drove there, arrived late, and was given mifepristone and misoprostol instead. After taking the first pill, she “insisted on driving home before any symptoms started.”

Days later, after vomiting and passing out at home, Thurman was taken to a suburban Atlanta hospital, where she reported a tender abdomen. Doctors noted a foul odor during a pelvic exam, and an ultrasound showed possible tissue in her uterus. Thurman needed a D&C, but according to Ms. Surana, the state had “criminalized” that procedure, “with few exceptions,” and practitioners who performed it risked “up to a decade in prison.” Physicians operated some 20 hours after her admission, after diagnosing her with acute severe sepsis. She died.

In the 56th paragraph of the story, Ms. Surana acknowledges: “It is not clear from the records available why doctors waited to provide a D&C to Thurman.” Mr. Walz obviously didn’t read that far, and the article’s title is meant to give the opposite impression: “Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.”

Kamala Harris has also cited the Thurman case to support her claim that “the Trump abortion ban” means “doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.” Both the Harris-Walz account and Ms. Surana’s gloss over several complications:

• The abortion pills. Thurman’s death affirms what antiabortion activists have argued: that the two-pill abortion regimen is far more dangerous than its advocates claim. The Food and Drug Administration in 2016 allowed nonphysicians to prescribe mifepristone, stopped requiring follow-up visits to evaluate patients for potential complications, and permitted use up to 10 weeks’ gestation from seven. Five years later, the FDA eliminated the requirement that women be evaluated in person by any medical professional.

Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, has written in these pages that the new protocols lead to far greater risk in the event of ectopic pregnancy, whose symptoms are similar to the normal effect of the abortion pills. According to the FDA’s label, after taking the regimen, between 2.9% and 4.6% of women visit the emergency room for an adverse reaction.

• Georgia’s statute. The law, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed in 2019 and a state judge in Atlanta enjoined last week, defines abortion as an act intended to “cause the death of an unborn child” when a “detectable human heartbeat” is present. Thurman’s unborn children were, it seems, already dead. Even if they hadn’t been, however, the law allows for immediate treatment “when a physician determines, in reasonable medical judgment, that a medical emergency exists” or that the “pregnancy is medically futile.”

Contrary to Ms. Harris’s claim, no abortion statute in the country requires doctors to “wait until the patient is at death’s door” to intervene. Several states with restrictive abortion laws—including Georgia, Florida and Texas—have taken formal actions to counter this misinformation. Other states with similar laws ought to communicate directly with hospitals and doctors to do the same.

• The hospital.Medicare’s rating of Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, where Thurman died, gives it two out of five stars and reports that only 41% of patients with severe sepsis or septic shock “received appropriate care.” (The national average is 61%.) Patient reviews report lower-than-average satisfaction with the hospital’s cleanliness, responsiveness and communication. The hospital might have been underresourced: As Ms. Surana notes, “a D&C requires an anesthesiologist, nurses, attending physicians and others”—a host of staff that might have been more readily available elsewhere.

Such tragedies also occur in states with permissive abortion laws. In Nevada, where abortion is legal until 24 weeks, Alyona Dixon, 24, died on Sept. 28, 2022, owing to “complications from septic abortion,” six days after a Planned Parenthood clinic reportedly gave her the same pills Thurman took. Dixon’s widower has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the hospital where she was initially treated and discharged. The complaint cites a physician’s expert declaration that the hospital “failed to adequately rule out sepsis as a cause of Ms. Dixon’s symptoms.”

Each of these details complicates the Harris-Walz narrative that Donald Trump is ultimately to blame for Amber Thurman’s death. That may be a politically convenient claim, but it grossly ignores the facts, stokes needless fear among vulnerable women and medical professionals alike, and exploits a young woman who tragically died.

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Source: The Truth About Amber Thurman’s Death – WSJ