Amber Thurman's family to sue Georgia hospital over abortion death: 'Doctors had a duty to act'
The family of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after taking abortion drugs in 2022, plans to sue the Piedmont Henry Hospital, accusing doctors of failing to provide care and keeping Thurman's loved ones in the dark about her condition.
Thurman's family retained Attorney Ben Crump, a high-profile civil rights and personal injury lawyer. Last week, the family joined Crump for a news conference in Decatur, Georgia, to demand "justice" for the 28-year-old mother.
A September ProPublica report suggested that physicians failed to provide Thurman with care due to confusion about Georgia's abortion law. Pro-life doctors, however, argue that removing Thurman's deceased unborn child, who was already dead by the time she arrived at the hospital, would not have violated the law.
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Georgia's law prohibits most abortions after a fetal heartbeat becomes detectable, defining abortion as "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 an unborn child."
"Even under Georgia law, the doctors had a duty to act to save Amber," Crump stated at the conference. "She had taken the abortion pills and there were tissues left. There was no viable fetus or anything that would have prevented them from saving her life while she suffered."
"You have a duty to stabilize her and then give her the option to go to another hospital facility," he added. "But you cannot let her suffer and die on your hospital bed when the death is preventable."
The Piedmont Henry Hospital, Benjamin Crump and the family of Amber Thurman did not immediately respond to The Christian Post's request for comment.
In 2022, Thurman obtained abortion drugs from a facility in North Carolina after learning she was pregnant with twins. Several days later, the mother began to develop a serious infection because some of her babies' remains were still in her uterus.
Doctors at the hospital diagnosed Thurman with acute severe sepsis and discussed the possibility of doing a dilation and curettage the next day. But the procedure did not happen the next morning. Instead, doctors escalated antibiotics, placed her on a blood pressure medication, and tested her for sexually transmitted diseases and pneumonia.
By the time Thurman was finally brought to the operating room, doctors discovered her bowel needed to be removed but determined the operation was too risky due to a lack of blood flow to that area. An expert told ProPublica that the blood pressure medication may have been responsible for the lack of blood flow.
An OB-GYN performed the D&C and continued with the hysterectomy, but Thurman's heart stopped while she was on the operating table.
During the conference last week, Thurman's family said that doctors didn't keep them updated about the young woman's condition. Thurman's mother, Shanette Williams, said that she would have taken her daughter to another hospital if she knew doctors had delayed performing a D&C.
"We would have done anything had we known, but we didn't," Williams said. "We didn't have the opportunity to know. It is so disheartening. It is heartbreaking. It is upsetting."
"Every emotion that you could think that a mother would have, I had," she added.
In addition to the lawsuit, Thurman's family is calling for a reevaluation of the state's maternal health policies, according to the Oct. 1 press release on Crump's website. The attorney and Thurman's family are calling for improvements to maternal health care, especially for black women.
"This tragic case also highlights the broader issue of Black maternal health disparities in Georgia and across the country. Black women are disproportionately affected by systemic discrimination in healthcare, with one in five reporting being treated unfairly by a healthcare provider due to their race," the release stated. "This inequity contributes to alarming disparities in maternal mortality rates among Black women."
Earlier this month, the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated the state's law prohibiting most abortions performed after an unborn baby's heartbeat can be detected. The order blocked the enforcement of a ruling from the Superior Court of Fulton County that struck down the heartbeat abortion ban while legal proceedings continue.
Justice John J. Ellington, who concurred in part and dissented in part, authored an opinion stating that "the State fails to show any reason for urgency that goes beyond their underlying arguments in favor of allowing the State to prevent women from deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected and before a fetus is viable."
"The parties' competing arguments about the harm flowing from either the enforcement or the non-enforcement of the statutory provisions at issue will form the crux of the appeal to come and should not be predetermined in the State's favor before the appeal is even docketed," he wrote.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
