You’ve no doubt heard about the tragic death of Amber Thurman who was denied a D&C in Georgia because of the new abortion laws, ended up getting sepsis and died on the operating table. She’s not the only one. ProPublica got hold of another report from the maternal death board and it’s equally awful.
Candi Miller was a Georgia mother of three in poor health and her doctor said she should not risk having another child. Unfortunately, she accidentally got pregnant and knew that she would not be able to get an abortion unless she was in danger of losing her life, which was very possible. So she decided that she had to deal with the situation alone:
Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages. In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions.
Her teenage son watched her suffer for days after she took the pills, bedridden and moaning. In the early hours of Nov. 12, 2022, her husband found her unresponsive in bed, her 3-year-old daughter at her side.
An autopsy found unexpelled fetal tissue, confirming that the abortion had not fully completed. It also found a lethal combination of painkillers, including the dangerous opioid fentanyl. Miller had no history of drug use, the medical records state; her family has no idea how she obtained them or what was going through her mind — whether she was trying to quell the pain, complete the abortion or end her life. A medical examiner was unable to determine the manner of death.
Her family later told a coroner she hadn’t visited a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.” situation herself:
The committee on maternal health determined that her death was preventable. If she hadn’t been burdened by Georgia’s draconian anti-abortion law she would have sought medical help.
I cannot help but be reminded of the very famous story of Gerri Santoro who was found dead on the floor of a dingy motel room rom an attempted self- induced abortion in 1964. Ms Magazine ran the police photo of the scene and it shocked the nation. Her story was a common one in those days. It looks like it’s common once again.
Ms. posted this in 2022 when Roe was overturned:
On the heels of the Supreme Court’s initial ruling in Roe v. Wade, we remembered Gerri and the women like her who had died from unsafe, illegal abortions. We declared: “Never again.”
We ran the photo again in 2016, after the election of Donald Trump—predicting that in the weeks, months and years to come, abortion access would become a battleground more hard-fought than ever. Unfortunately, we were right.
For too many women of my generation, a time before Roe feels like ancient history—but now, that history looms dangerously in the future. Almost five decades after Roe, we’re once again in the fight of our lives.
We must demand that women have bodily autonomy and control over their destinies. We must remind lawmakers that a majority of Americans support safe and legal abortion. We must remind the country what a nation without any safe, legal abortion access looks like. We must remind our lawmakers what women’s lives without abortion access look like—and the devastating ways in which an end to abortion access is an end to our freedom.
We must bring back to life the stories of women like Gerri, who died because they had no choice, and the thousands of women like her whose lives were forever altered because they didn’t, either.
“She was just one of countless women who died in this lonely and desperate way,” Gerri’s daughter said to the crowd in 2004. “They were all someone’s sister, daughter, mother or friend.”
I’ve posted Gerri Santoro’s picture on this blog many times over the years but I’m not going to do it again. It feels so much worse to look at it now. If you have never seen it, you can click here.
This is what Trump means when he says he wants to make America Great Again.