Marjorie Taylor Greene said Kamala Harris was “lying” about Amber Nicole Thurman’s death when she spoke about it during a speech in Georgia that focused on abortion rights.
Thurman, 28, died in August 2022—two weeks after Georgia enacted a strict abortion ban and criminalized the procedure, ProPublica reported on Monday, September 16. The young mother had sought treatment at a hospital for complications from taking an abortion pill.
ProPublica reported that even as she developed sepsis, doctors at the hospital did not evacuate the remaining fetal tissue in her uterus with a procedure called dilation and curettage and she ultimately died on the operating table. An official state committee deemed her death “preventable,” according to ProPublica.
The vice president spoke about Thurman when she addressed a crowd in Atlanta, Georgia, on Friday, referring to hard-line restrictions on abortion as “Trump abortion bans.”
Rep. Greene, a longtime Trump supporter who represents Georgia’s 14th congressional district, said Harris was “lying to women in Georgia.”
Kamala Harris is lying to women in GA right now!
She claims Amber Nicole Thurman died from an abortion “ban” in GA.
The TRUTH is Amber tragically died from taking abortion pills!
And there is NO Trump abortion “ban.”
The Supreme Court gave states the right to make their own…
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) September 20, 2024
She wrote on X: “[Harris] claims Amber Nicole Thurman died from an abortion ‘ban’ in GA. The TRUTH is Amber tragically died from taking abortion pills!
“And there is NO Trump abortion ‘ban.’ The Supreme Court gave states the right to make their own decisions.”
Greene went on: “Amber would be alive today if she had not taken abortion pills! Taking the abortion pills is what led to her tragic death.”
Newsweek has contacted Harris’ team, via email outside of normal working hours, for comment. It has also contacted Greene for any further comment.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene leaves the U.S. Capitol on September 12. Greene has insisted there is no “Trump abortion ‘ban.'”
AP
In her speech, Harris said: “When Donald Trump was president, he hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court…with the intention that they would overturn the protections of Roe v. Wade and, as he intended, they did.
“And now more than 20 states have Trump abortion bans—extremists that have passed laws that criminalize health care providers, doctors and nurses, and punish women.”
She went on ask the crowd to “speak” Amber Nicole Thurman’s name. “When [Thurman] discovered that she was pregnant, she decided that she wanted to have an abortion, but because of the Trump abortion ban here in Georgia, she was forced to travel out of state to receive the health care that she needed,” said Harris.
“But when she returned to Georgia, she needed additional care—so she went to a hospital. But you see, under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed.”
Vice President Harris: We now know that women have died because of Trump Abortion Bans. That includes a healthy 28-year-old woman in Georgia. Her name was Amber Nicole Thurman. She died of sepsis, and experts have determined that her death was preventable pic.twitter.com/loBJDsbY9Z
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 20, 2024
Harris added: “Understand what a law like this means—doctors have to wait until a patient is at death’s door before they take action.”
The Trump campaign, which has consistently held the position that abortion policies should be determined by states, said that blame lies with the hospital for failing to provide lifesaving care.
“President Trump has always supported exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, which Georgia’s law provides,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s spokesperson, said in a statement. “With those exceptions in place, it’s unclear why doctors did not swiftly act to protect Amber Thurman’s life.”
Newsweek has contacted the hospital, via a press contact form outside of normal working hours, for comment. ProPublica reported that the hospital did not respond to its requests for comment.
Harris also challenged Trump’s position on exceptions in her speech, when she said: “You’re saying that good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy is about saying that a health care provider will only start providing that care when you’re about to die?”
She continued with Thurman’s story, saying she waited “20 excruciating hours” until “she was in enough physical distress that her doctors thought they would be OK to treat her.”
“But it was too late, she died of sepsis,” Harris added.
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s team, via email outside of normal working hours, for a response to these comments.
Georgia law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, labeled the LIFE Act, it took effect on July 20, 2022. Thurman’s pregnancy had recently passed that mark when she discovered it, records shared with ProPublica showed.
The law also made performing a dilation and curettage (D&C), a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus following an abortion or miscarriage, a felony offense with medical exceptions.
Abortion using medication is the most common way to end a pregnancy in the U.S, and deaths from complications are extremely rare—32 deaths were reported to the FDA through 2022 out of almost 6 million who have used mifepristone to terminate a pregnancy, regardless of whether the drug played a role.
Abortion continues to be a major issue in this year’s election, with the Democrats pushing themselves as the party of reproductive freedom and Trump sticking to his stance that it should be left up to the states.
While he has denied claims that he would sign a nationwide abortion ban if he won, Trump was not willing to say whether he would veto a national ban if it landed on his desk, when asked about it during the presidential debate on September 10.
