Pro-choice activists warned in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health that the subsequent cascade of abortion bans would kill women. Two years after the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, we're not finding out that it didn't take long. Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, died on August 19, 2022, less than a month after Georgia passed its draconian abortion law that banned the treatment that could have saved her life. While the doctors and nurses tasked with her care did not speak to ProPublica, who first reported on this death this week, a 10-member committee set up to examine maternal mortality cases has deemed Thurman's death "preventable," and ruled she would have likely lived if doctors had used the protocols that had been in place before the Georgia law made them a felony.

The same anti-abortion activists insisting they'd honor these phony "exceptions" to abortion law are also currently pumping out endless propaganda insisting that women who have medically indicated abortions are liars.

But Republicans and Christian right activists don't want to take responsibility for the loss of this healthy young mother of a 6-year-old boy. Instead, they're casting blame on everyone else: the doctors in the Georgia hospital, abortion providers in North Carolina, and, though they will deny doing so, they're blaming Thurman herself. Thurman chose abortion. They're blaming her choice for her death.

In her rant on Twitter about it, anti-choice activist Lila Rose repeatedly emphasized how she believes Thurman did this to herself, declaring she "died from sepsis after taking legally obtained abortion pills." Acknowledging that Thurman "sought out an abortion" and traveled to North Carolina for the pills, Rose insists, "Abortion killed Amber Thurman. Abortion killed Amber's twin babies." She also blames Thurman for waiting "days before seeking medical care." While Rose will pretend otherwise, the victim-blaming is not subtle.

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Rose's finger-pointing is dishonest to a grotesque extreme. Thurman's death is not due to her choice to take medication abortion, which has a mortality rate of .0003%, which is 1 in every 377,000 cases. (Out of........

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