ProPublica’s attempt to blur the distinction between D&C for retained tissue and D&C to end the life of the developing baby underscores the media’s smear campaign against prolife laws.
Democrats and their corporate media allies are so desperate to get rid of pro-life laws that they’ll fabricate stories to wrongly smear them as not only bad for women but deadly.
The latest is ProPublica’s story of a Georgia woman who died after a North Carolina abortionist gave her chemical abortion pills — which, contrary to Democrat narratives, are unsafe. The article, however, pretends the death was caused by Georgia’s pro-life laws. The author of the story repeatedly attempts to conflate a procedure used to treat miscarriages, dilation and curettage (D&C), with elective abortion.
In ProPublica’s telling, 28-year-old Amber Nicole Thurman had ingested the chemical abortion pill regimen, which consists of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. Mifepristone ends the life of the developing human being; misoprostol helps achieve complete expulsion of the embryo.
It’s worth noting that the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone acknowledged its risks and enacted safety requirements, including a seven-week gestational limit, requiring women to see a physician in person, and a mandatory one-time post-abortion appointment to confirm that the uterus was empty and that bleeding had subsided. The FDA also required manufacturers of the abortion pill to report all adverse health events that were reported to them, such as infection or excessive bleeding — not just patient deaths.
But thanks to Democrat efforts to relax safety requirements for abortion pills, important safeguards no longer apply. When Thurman experienced “complications” from the abortion, which ProPublica wrongly asserts are “rare,” she went to the hospital for a D&C.
While ProPublica claims, “Thurman had told doctors her miscarriage was not spontaneous — it was the result of taking pills to terminate her pregnancy,” Thurman was not experiencing a miscarriage. She had undergone an abortion. Her unborn twins had already died, and she had retained parts of their bodies or the placenta — a known complication of abortion pill use and one of the very reasons for the FDA’s requirement for a post-abortion follow-up visit with a doctor.
Misrepresenting Georgia Law
Here Kavitha Surana, the story’s author, fails to note the difference between elective abortion and non-abortive D&Cs. She writes: “But just that summer, [Thurman’s state of Georgia] had made performing [D&Cs] a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.”
This is a gross mischaracterization of the Georgia law.Performing a D&C is not a felony in Georgia (or anywhere else in the nation), nor has it been criminalized. It remains a standard medical procedure — and an indispensable one in cases like Thurman’s. It is always legal in every state because, unlike abortion, it is not intentional feticide.
“Instead of performing the newly criminalized procedure, they continued to gather information and dispense medicine,” Surana writes. But as the American Academy of ProLife Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) explains in an extensive thread on X, a “D&C should have been immediate and concurrent with the initiation of antibiotics (and was not prevented by Georgia’s law).”
What the law prohibits is an overt act that directly and intentionally causes the death of the developing baby. It states: “’Abortion’” means the act of using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy with knowledge that termination will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of anunborn child.”
In Thurman’s tragic case, her unborn twins were already dead by the time she arrived at the hospital. It is obvious that the performance of a D&C in this case would not constitute an abortion as there was no longer a living baby to abort. No physician performing any procedure to save Thurman’s life could or would be prosecuted.
In fact, the author misquotes the statute, stating: “It prohibits doctors from using any instrument ‘with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy.’ While removing fetal tissue is not terminating a pregnancy, medically speaking, the law only specifies it’s not considered an abortion to remove ‘a dead unborn child’ that resulted from a ‘spontaneous abortio’” defined as ‘naturally occurring’ from a miscarriage or a stillbirth”.
The author does not quote the law in full, leaving the impression that it is a felony to perform a D&C to remove a dead fetus from a mother’s uterus. This is not true, nor is other information ProPublica includes about D&Cs or abortion.
Misrepresenting the Truth About Doctors
ProPublica’s argument rests on the assumption that pro-life laws make doctors afraid to give life-saving care to women. Surana writes: “When [obstetrical doctors] do try to provide care, it can be a challenge to find other medical staff to participate. A D&C requires an anesthesiologist, nurses, attending physicians and others. Doctors said peers have refused to participate because of their personal views or their fear of being exposed to criminal charges. Georgia law allows medical staff to refuse to participate in abortions.”
This statement flies in the face of the lived experience of doctors who regularly care for women like Thurman. A D&C for retained fetal parts or placenta is a commonly performed gynecologic procedure, not a crime or “a challenge” — either before or after Dobbs v. Jackson. Catholic hospitals, whose staff do not perform abortions, treat women with this condition every day. As of 2011, only 14 percent of OB-GYNs in the United States performed elective abortions — largely because of religious beliefs, but ProPublica fails to mention this fact.
Misrepresenting the Dangers of Abortion Pills
Minimizing the risks of mifepristone can lead women to ignore abortion doubts and adverse reactions. Yet ProPublica paints Thurman’s abortion pill complications as “rare.”
However, retained baby body parts and other abortion pill complications are not rare. One study comparing outcomes between medical and surgical abortion showed that with abortion pills, the risk of hemorrhage was 15.6 percent, the risk of incomplete induced abortion (retained fetal parts or placenta) was 6.7 percent, and the risk of emergency surgery was 5.9 percent. Given that at least half of the approximately 834,637 abortions that occur in the United States every year are with pills, approximately 27,960 will have an incomplete induced abortion. How many of them will endure the complications of abortion, as Thurman did, until they’re so severe they lead to death?
Thurston Howell III
Article URL : https://thefederalist.com/2024/09/20/amber-thurman-died-from-the-abortion-pill-not-pro-life-laws/