Abortion pills and medical negligence killed woman, not pro-life laws, doctor says

Kate Quiñones   By Kate Quiñones for CNA

September 18, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 3 Print

 

null / Credit: Ivanko80/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Sep 18, 2024 / 16:50 pm (CNA).

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday amplified claims by several news outlets that a woman has died as the result of pro-life laws. But doctors say that the Georgia woman, Amber Thurman, died because of the abortion pill and medical malpractice.

ProPublica’s disputed report claimed that Georgia’s restrictions on abortion delayed access to medical care, causing the death of a woman named Amber Nicole Thurman. Thurman died at age 28 in 2022 after being hospitalized due to an infection after she took abortion pills, according to the report.

Thurman received the abortion pills out of state in North Carolina because she was more than six weeks pregnant, the report says. Georgia law limits abortion after six weeks, but Thurman was about nine weeks pregnant when she procured the chemical abortion, according to the Washington Examiner.

Harris blamed Thurman’s death on Donald Trump on Tuesday, saying: “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.”

Harris’ campaign announced she will speak Friday about Thurman’s death in Atlanta as well as that of another Georgia woman, Candi Miller, who died after not seeking medical help following severe complications due to a chemical abortion.

What caused Amber Thurman’s death?

Some news reports blamed pro-life limits on abortion for Thurman’s death, but Georgia state law explicitly allows abortions when the mother’s life or physical health is at risk. Thurman had a chemical abortion in South Carolina prior to her arrival in the emergency room, and when she arrived, her unborn twins had no heart activity.

Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) and a board-certified OB-GYN who has practiced for two decades, said that Thurman’s death “was caused by legal abortion drugs” as well as medical negligence.

“Amber Thurman’s tragic death, recently covered by multiple news organizations, was caused by side effects of legal abortion drugs and medical negligence, not pro-life laws,” Francis said in a Tuesday statement.

Thurman went to the emergency room five days after she experienced complications from the abortion pill. Tissue from her deceased babies — unborn twins — remained in her uterus, causing an infection, according to ProPublica. As there was no cardiac activity in the fetuses when Thurman arrived at the hospital, her unborn babies were no longer alive.

Doctors considered a dilation and curettage “D&C” procedure, which would have removed the twins’ remains. The following day, her doctors did not perform the D&C, and by the time she went to the operating room, more serious problems had developed, including hemorrhaging. From her arrival, it took the doctors 20 hours to operate. She died on the operating table.

ProPublica interviewed Thurman’s best friend, Ricaria Baker, who went with Thurman to obtain the abortion. According to Baker, Thurman missed her scheduled D&C abortion at the South Carolina clinic due to traffic and was told by an employee to have a chemical abortion using the drug regimen mifepristone and misoprostol. Baker notes that Thurman took the pills as she was directed.

“Despite taking the drugs as she was instructed and seeking timely care when she experienced complications, she still died,” Francis commented. “Rather than highlighting the dangers of these drugs, which have caused numerous deaths, abortion proponents are instead trying to blame Georgia’s laws in their push to protect induced abortion at all costs.”

According to the FDA warning label for the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, between 2.9% and 4.6% of women will visit the emergency room after taking the drugs.

Abortion pills have four times as many complications as surgical abortions, according to a 2023 report by the Charlotte Lozier Institute. As many as 1 in 5 women will suffer complications after a chemical abortion and as many as 15% will experience hemorrhaging, while 2% will experience infection.

ProPublica, which first reported on the woman’s death, acknowledged in its initial report that “it is not clear from the record available why the doctors waited to provide a D&C” but cites Georgia’s abortion limitations as the cause.

A state committee of 10 doctors said that Thurman’s death was preventable and the hospital’s delay played a role in the fatal outcome.

In Francis’ opinion, it was the doctors’ negligence and the abortion pill complications that killed Thurman — not the state’s pro-life laws, which allow abortions and other lifesaving medical procedures in cases where the woman’s physical health or life is at risk.

Georgia state law also has other exceptions for abortions, including exceptions for rape and incest for up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

There were also no fetal heartbeats detected in the 9-week-old unborn twins, meaning it would not have been an abortion.

“Amber Thurman’s state of Georgia clearly allows physicians to intervene in medical emergencies or when there is no detectable fetal heartbeat, both of which applied to her,” Francis said. “Don’t be misled by those who advocate for induced abortion over the health and safety of women.”

“This woman did not have to die,” said Dr. Susan Bane, another doctor with AAPLOG. “Based on the timeline and her symptoms, she should have had [the D&C procedure] done as soon as she could get to the hospital. It was medical negligence and had nothing to do with any sort of law in Georgia or elsewhere.”

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called the rhetoric around the deaths of Thurman and Miller “deadly misinformation.”

“We mourn the senseless loss of Amber, Candi, and their unborn children. We agree their deaths were preventable. But let’s be absolutely clear: Georgia’s law and every pro-life state law calls on doctors to act in circumstances just like theirs,” said Katie Daniel, SBA’s state policy director. “If abortion advocates weren’t spreading misinformation and confusion to score political points, it’s possible the outcome would have been different.”

Do pro-life states ban emergency medical care for pregnant women?

According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, no pro-life states prevent emergency life-saving medical treatments for pregnant women, according to one research institute.

“Make no mistake: all state abortion bans currently in effect contain exceptions to ‘prevent the death’ or ‘preserve the life’ of the pregnant person,’ according to KFF,” Francis noted. KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, is a leading health policy organization.

KFF outlines state laws on abortion and details what exceptions pro-life states have.

Amid reports that women have been barred from medical care due to pro-life abortion limits, the Charlotte Lozier Institute investigated the claim and found that all pro-life states allow doctors to treat women with pregnancy emergencies according to their medical judgment.

“All pro-life state laws allow doctors to exercise their medical judgment to treat women with pregnancy emergencies. No law requires ‘imminence’ or ‘certainty’ before a doctor can act to save the patient’s life,” read the Sept. 13 Charlotte Lozier Institute fact sheet by Tess Cox, Dr. Ingrid Skop, and Mary Harned.

The institute found that all pro-life states allow emergency treatments during pregnancy-related emergencies, following reports of women allegedly not receiving the medical care they require in cases of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies, and other emergencies.

The institute found that all but five of these state laws included language allowing abortion when a woman’s health was in serious jeopardy, while in states without this language, the law permits doctors to use “reasonable” medical judgment to determine if an abortion is necessary.

“Every state with a strong pro-life law permits doctors to treat women suffering from spontaneous miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, and the treatment of these conditions is not considered an abortion under any law,” the institute noted.

“Doctors and hospitals who fail to provide patients with necessary treatment in emergency circumstances may be committing malpractice,” the fact sheet noted.

The institute cites recent cases that raise concerns that state laws may be preventing pregnant women from receiving necessary care. One woman was turned away from a hospital multiple times before an ectopic pregnancy ruptured her fallopian tube. Other articles report instances of hospitals turning away women who were suffering from ectopic pregnancies, incomplete miscarriages, premature rupture of membranes, and other circumstances.

“While it is not always easy to determine from a news article whether medical malpractice occurred, pro-life state laws are clear: Doctors can intervene in medical emergencies,” the authors wrote.

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How a new study says premarital sex affects marital happiness

October 24, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Denver, Colo., Oct 24, 2018 / 10:08 am (CNA).- People who have had only one lifetime sexual partner have happier marriages than people with two or more lifetime partners, according to a new report from the Institute for Family Studies.

The study’s author, Dr. Nicholas Wolfinger of the University of Utah, found that women who have been sexually intimate only with their spouses are most likely to report having “very happy” marriages, at 65 percent. Among women with between six and ten lifetime sexual partners, only 52% reported being “very happy” in their marriage, the lowest in the study.

Among men, 71% with one partner reported being very happy with their marriage, according the study. For men who report two or more sexual partners, the number drops to 65 percent.

In addition, 40% of the study’s respondents reported having had only one or zero sexual partners before getting married. Wolfinger pointed out that the rate among younger Americans, who have married since 2000, is closer to 27 percent. The median American woman born in the 1980s has had three sex partners in her lifetime, and the median man six; just five percent of all women marrying in the 2010s were virgins.

“The surprisingly large number of Americans reporting one lifetime sex partner have the happiest marriages,” the study reads. “Past one partner, it doesn’t make as much of a difference. The overall disparity isn’t huge, but neither is it trivial.”

The study controlled for the religiosity of its subjects, which Wolfinger said has been shown by other studies to be a major factor in happy marriages, but not the only explanation. He said the data he has is not conclusive on this point.

“Coming into this beforehand, I would have expected religion to be one reason why people who don’t have a lot of sex partners would have happier marriages,” Wolfinger told CNA.

“Church attendance, in itself, produces happier marriages…but be that as it may, controlling for [denomination and church attendance] did not substantially affect the relationship between how many premarital sex partners you have and whether you’re in a very happy marriage.”

What this means, Wolfinger clarified, is that people are more likely to have a happy marriage if they have fewer premarital sexual partners whether they are religious or not.

One major factor affecting this result, he said, is the fact that premarital sex can often result in children born out of wedlock, which unfortunately tend to strain future relationships. Moreover, people who have had previous sexual partners before marriage may later compare their spouse to those previous partners, leading to a decline in the happiness of their marriage.

In a similar 2016 study, Wolfinger examined the divorce rate in relation to the number of sexual partners a woman has had in her lifetime. He found that survey respondents who had not had sexual partners before marriage had the lowest divorce rates, and those with ten or more partners in their lifetime were the most likely to spit up, with a 30% chance of divorce in the first 5 years of marriage.

Of those women who married in the 2000s without having first had sex, nearly 70% reported regularly attending some kind of church services, while less than 30% of women with ten or more partners were churchgoers.

“Everything should be on the table”

Father Brian O’Brien, a priest of the Diocese of Tulsa in Oklahoma, told CNA that the statistics presented in the IFS study are confirmed by his experience working in marriage preparation for 11 years. He said he often presents statistics to the couples he counsels, to try to help explain how premarital cohabitation and premarital sex can negatively affect the happiness of their marriage.

“Ultimately it comes down to: we’re not meant to be used,” O’Brien told CNA.

“I think what happens in a lot of cases is [people think]: ‘I’ll just sleep with a whole bunch of people, and maybe one of them will work out.’ And that’s exactly what happens in the movies…but the idea that you can just use somebody and move on as if that didn’t happen, I think is where the unhappiness sets in.”

People will remember the sexual partners that they had “along the way,” because sex bonds people together, he said. A bond with a person who is no longer in a person’s life will remain with them even if they start a new relationship, leaving a “lingering guilt,” “unresolved issues,” and “baggage” that makes new relationships that much more difficult.

“Marriage is hard enough, and it’s even harder if you’re bringing in a bunch of baggage,” he said. “For couples that are going to enter into a marriage covenant, everything should be on the table.”

O’Brien said that the broader trend in society of couples coming into marriage with multiple sexual partners, as evidenced by statistics cited in the IFS study, has also manifested itself among the couples he counsels.

“I go into [marriage prep] assuming, until I talk to them, that the couple is probably living together, and I assume that they are sexually active,” O’Brien said.

“I tell [couples] that I want their marriage to be as happy and holy as possible, and your marriage will be happier and holier if you abstain from sex and if you don’t live together.”

O’Brien said he thinks most couples who are living together know what they’re doing is wrong, especially when it comes to being sexually active. He said he suspects that there are many couples that don’t see anything wrong with cohabitation before marriage, viewing the move primarily as an economic decision.

“It’s not that they’re sort of ‘trying each other out,’ it’s that ‘we don’t want to pay two rents,'” O’Brien explained. “So I think in that way they’re not really flaunting Church teaching, they’re trying to make good economic decisions.”

He said he takes a pastoral approach to the couple’s situation, affirming them in their good decisions and “meeting them where they are.”

“If they’re not living together, and they’re not sexually active, it’s my chance to say: “Awesome! Great job!” and to really affirm them in those decisions,” he said.

He said generally in the second or third marriage prep meeting, he’ll ask some basic information such as the couple’s home address. If the couple is already living together, they will often admit it at that point, if reluctantly.

“They’ll look at each other like: ‘Oh no. Should we give him the same address?’ And as soon as they do that, I’ll ask ‘So do you guys live at the same place?’ And they have this guilty look on their face, and they’ll say yes,” O’Brien said.

“And I’ll say: ‘Ok, I’m not yelling at you, but obviously you guys feel bad about it.’ So then we’ll kind of take that and discuss it as we go.”

O’Brien said despite popular opinion that may suggest that fewer people are seeking marriage in the Catholic Church, he and his fellow priests in Oklahoma are engaged in marriage prep and presiding at weddings “all the time.”

“I’m not ready to throw in the towel on the young people of the Church,” he said. “Because I think there really is a desire to have God as part of their marriage, and they’re not finding that in other places.”

Father Zach Swantek, a chaplain at Seton Hall University, offered his thoughts about his experience with modern marriage prep in an email to CNA.

“Often priests are afraid to discuss issues such as pre-marital sex, chastity, cohabitation, contraception and even participation in the Church with [couples], for fear that they will be offended or scared off,” Swantek wrote.

“On the other hand, some priests boast about how they refuse to marry couples that fail to live in strict adherence to the teachings of the Church, yet do not help these couples to understand and live these teachings,” he added.

“Marriage preparation must be viewed as an opportunity to accompany the couple, gradually leading them to the fullness of truth about faith, sacraments and marriage. This requires patience and work, but it is well worth the effort.”

[…]

3 Comments

  1. Ten years ago they had the same lie about an Indian woman in Ireland who was reported to have died not being given an abortion. She died of an infection. But she was placed as a martyr for abortion and her parents welcomed the 2018 ruling that kills nearly 5000 babies in Ireland annually! Tell a lie long enough and it will be seen as the truth Joseph Goebbels!

    Reply

  2. Exactly. This also was a cause of the poor Irish mother’s death that was exploited in the same way to promote the Irish feticide referendum. When healthcare providers fail in standards of care & neglect to follow medical protocols, people die. When patients are people of colour or of lower income/status it’s even more likely.

    Reply

  3. Considering the extremely liberal bias of the public schools and those who administer them, I’m guessing that the science curricula, including the unit about “human reproduction” is heavily biased towards abortion rights and the “safer” option of abortion vs. the “dangerous” option of bearing and delivering a live baby. Adults who have grown up with this indoctrination and abortion on demand often claim that abortion is safer than submitting to a pregnancy and giving birth to a live human being. I think that this kind of indoctrination occurs in inner-city schools that are primarily teaching minorities, especially African-Americans–the very idea that the young women should abort their babies seems to me to be a racist assumption that these babies are not worth bringing into the world. But I’m guessing that the pro-abortion administrators and teachers would call ME the racist for encouraging African-American teen moms to bear and birth to their precious human beings.

    Reply

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