Women are dying due to vague abortion laws in states

Evidence is mounting that abortion bans are threatening the lives of mothers in states where the prohibitions are the strictest.

Medical experts and pro-choice activists in states like Florida, Georgia and Texas say women are increasingly subjected to life-threatening health conditions and death when pregnancy complications occur after strict time limits for abortions expire.

The 2024 deaths of two Georgia mothers highlight the dangers facing women with high-risk pregnancies and medical professionals uncertain when life-saving procedures could be considered illegal.

“We are seeing miscarriages and unviable pregnancies not being managed because a lot of private Ob/Gyns are afraid to do that because the exceptions in these statutes are so narrow,” said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates.

Goodhue recalled a Florida woman whose multiple ultrasounds confirmed she had miscarried, but doctors were hesitant to remove the dead fetus for fear it violated the state’s six-week abortion ban.

“This is dangerous because if you don’t remove it from the womb, the mother can go into sepsis,” she explained. “That’s what happened to the woman in Georgia.”

Amber Nicole Thurman

That woman was Atlanta resident Amber Nicole Thurman, who died in August 2022 from an infection developed after taking abortion pills and being unable to fully expel fetal tissue from her uterus, according to an investigative report by ProPublica.

“But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison,” Goodhue said.

When physicians finally stepped in 20 hours later, Thurman was experiencing organ failure and could not be saved, ProPublica reported. “The otherwise healthy 28-year-old medical assistant, who had her sights set on nursing school, should not have died, an official state committee recently concluded.”

Georgia’s six-week abortion ban includes exceptions for rape and incest, lethal fetal abnormalities and medical emergencies, but defines those emergencies in language that is open to legal and medical interpretation, according to Women’s Health Policy.

Georgia’s committee of maternal health experts concluded Thurman’s death could have been prevented and that the delay in treatment had a “large impact” in causing her death. “ProPublica obtained reports that confirm that at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state,” the report says.

Candi Miller

The other known case was that of Candi Miller who, like Thurman, had taken abortion medication and died after being unable to expel all fetal tissue from her body, ProPublica reported. Her family later said Miller had avoided seeking medical treatment because of the state’s strict abortion ban. She died in November 2022.

“Her case adds to mounting evidence that exceptions to abortion bans do not, as billed, protect the ‘life of the mother,” ProPublica reported.

Texas deaths ‘skyrocket’

In Texas, the number of women dying while pregnant has “skyrocketed” since its total abortion ban was implemented as Senate Bill 8 in 2021, NBC News reported.

Those deaths increased 56% through 2022, compared to an 11% increase nationwide during that period. The Texas law currently outlaws all abortions except to save a mother’s life.

“There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” Nancy L. Cohen, president of the Gender Equity Policy Institute, said in the NBC News report. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.”

The rates of Hispanic women who died while pregnant, during childbirth or soon afterward increased from 14.5 per 100,000 in 2019 to 18.9 in 2022. Among Black women the rates increased from 31.6 per 100,000 to 43.6. And among white women the increase was from 20 per 100,000 to 39.1.

“Women prefer to lose their ability to ever have children over the chance that they might become pregnant following SB 8.”

Requests for sterilization also have jumped since the Texas ban became law, NBC News reported. “That is, women prefer to lose their ability to ever have children over the chance that they might become pregnant following SB 8.”

Florida warning

While no pregnancy-related deaths have been reported as a result of Florida’s abortion ban, Physicians for Human Rights recently declared the law a significant danger to women’s health.

“The penalties for those who violate the ban are severe, including imprisonment, fines and loss of medical licenses,” the organization said in a September report titled “Delayed and Denied: How Florida’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Criminalizes Medical Care.”

“Florida’s six-week ban is creating insurmountable barriers to abortion care for many patients. Clinicians described how the unworkability of the ban’s narrow exceptions and the severe chilling effect on abortion provision caused by the sweeping criminalization of abortion from a very early stage of pregnancy are endangering patients’ health and survival and impairing clinicians’ ability to comply with their ethical obligations and medical standards of care.”

The Florida ban went into effect May 1, replacing a 15-week ban instituted a month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Anyone who performs or participates in the termination of a pregnancy faces a third-degree felony and up to five years in prison. Unlike other states, Florida’s ban does not clearly exempt pregnant people themselves from prosecution.

While the law includes exceptions in cases of preterm rupture of membranes, gestational tumors and ectopic pregnancies, the guidelines “lack medical clarity, further confusing clinicians,” the physicians group explained.

Interviews with Florida health care professionals “described the serious and manifold harms the ban is causing pregnant people in the state who seek reproductive health care. The six-week ban is unclear in its guidelines and introduces barriers to care, delays in emergency reproductive services, and deviations from standard medical care. Moreover, the steep penalties, particularly when combined with other laws, create intensified fear and confusion among health care providers who do not know in what cases they legally can or cannot provide abortion care, creating strain in the patient-clinician relationship and inducing providers and trainees to leave the state.”

Legal challenges

Currently, abortion bans are being challenged in several states. Abortion-rights measures are on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New York, Nevada and South Dakota.

Legal challenges also have been mounted against strict prohibitions, although with dubious results so far.

The Georgia Supreme Court Oct. 7 reinstated the state’s six-week ban while it considers an appeal of a lower-court ruling suspending the law on the grounds women have a right to control their own bodies.

The same day Georgia’s justices acted, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Biden administration challenge of a Texas rule preventing emergency abortions that violate the state’s abortion ban.

“Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion,” the Associated Press reported.

Strict abortion bans create catch-22 situations for medical providers and pregnant women alike, Goodhue added. “A lot of time hospitals don’t know what to do when a woman needs pregnancy related treatment. But these are things that can’t wait while a woman’s life is at stake.”

 

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