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dobbs v. jackson women's health organization
Bracing for New Trump Attacks, Georgia Abortion Defenders Vow to Fight On
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," said one mother whose daughter died after being denied care under Georgia's six-week ban.
Jan 21, 2025
Congresswoman Nikema Williams joined patients, healthcare providers, and activists—including the mother of a woman who died after being refused abortion care in Georgia—at a Tuesday press conference held a day before what would have been the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and amid fears of a national abortion ban during U.S. President Donald Trump's second term.
"I refuse to stand by while extremist politicians attack our freedoms, our health, and our future," Williams (D-Ga.) told attendees of the virtual press conference, which was hosted by the abortion rights group Free & Just. "Reproductive freedom is about healthcare, it's about dignity, it's about autonomy. It's about ensuring that everyone, every person, has the ability to make the best decisions for themselves and their families without government interference."
Speakers at Tuesday's event included Shanette Williams, whose 28-year-old daughter Amber Nicole Thurman died in 2022 after being forced to travel out of state to seek care due to a recently passed Georgia law banning almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a period during which many people don't even know they're pregnant.
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice."
Thurman, who was the single mother of a young son, is one of at least several U.S. women—most of them Black or brown—whose deaths have been attributed to draconian anti-abortion laws.
"She left a son, who every day is confused by why his mother is not here," Williams said of her daughter. "I'm here to be that voice, to fight, to push, to do whatever I need to do to help save another life. Because I never want a mother to feel what I feel today."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," Williams added. "In November, following reporting from ProPublica, officials in Georgia dismissed all members of the state's Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which investigates the deaths of pregnant women across the state."
Last September, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney struck down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that made the procedure legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
Avery Davis Bell, a Savannah mother who had to travel out of Georgia for care after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition that threatened her own life as well, said during Tuesday's press conference: "I could have been Amber Nicole Thurman. It is important for me to continue sharing my story and advocating for us to be able to build the families we want, protect our lives, and be here for our living children."
Atlanta-area ultrasound technician and abortion care provider Suki O. said during the event that Georgia's ban "has been in place for three years now and it doesn't get any easier."
"To turn women away is the hardest thing for me to do," she added. "How many Black women will die, have died, and will continue to die due to these abortion bans?"
Davan'te Jennings, president of Young Democrats of Georgia and youth organizing director at Men4Choice, told the press conference that abortion "is not just a women's issue, this is a man's issue as well."
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice," Jennings added. "What would it look like for you to have to watch your mother go through this? To watch your sister go through this?"
While Trump has said he would veto any national abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, reproductive rights advocates have expressed doubt that the president—a well-documented liar—would actually do so, and warned that his administration could use a 151-year-old law known as the Comstock Act to outlaw the procedure without needing congressional approval.
Critics also note that Trump has repeatedly bragged about appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 decision that canceled nearly a half-century of federal abortion rights.
The Trump administration is also widely expected to revive the so-called Global Gag Rule, which bans foreign nongovernmental organizations from performing or promoting abortion care using funds from any source, if they receive funds from the U.S. government for family planning activities.
Conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation-led coalition behind Project 2025—a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government—have proposed policies includinga national abortion ban, restricting access to birth control, defunding Planned Parenthood, monitoring and tracking pregnancy and abortion data, and eviscerating federal protections for lifesaving emergency abortion care.
While campaigning for president, Trump said he would allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 12 states currently have near-total abortion bans, and 29 states have enacted prohibitions based on gestational duration.
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'MAGA Abortion Bans Kill Women': Pregnant Texas Teen Dead After Care Denied
"Make no mistake Donald Trump's abortion ban did this," said one reproductive rights leader. "We must stop him."
Nov 01, 2024
Nevaeh Crain would have turned 20 on Friday. Instead, she is yet another American woman killed by a Republican abortion ban.
After reporting on Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who died because of a Georgia ban enacted in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court reversingRoe v. Wade in 2022, ProPublica turned to Texas, sharing the stories of Josseli Barnica and Crain, who died at 18 years old last year, having endured a sepsis complication, the miscarriage of a daughter she planned to name Lillian, and delayed medical care.
"On the morning of their baby shower, October 28, 2023, Crain woke with a headache," ProPublica reported Friday. Soon vomiting with a fever, she sought care at two Texas hospitals a total of three times over 20 hours. As the outlet detailed: "On her third trip, a doctor insisted on two ultrasounds to 'confirm fetal demise' before moving her to intensive care. Hours later, Crain died."
As journalists Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana explained:
ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain's medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.
Some said the first ER missed warning signs of infection that deserved attention. All said that the doctor at the second hospital should never have sent Crain home when her signs of sepsis hadn't improved. And when she returned for the third time, all said there was no medical reason to make her wait for two ultrasounds before taking aggressive action to save her.
"This is how these restrictions kill women," said Dr. Dara Kass, a former regional director at the Department of Health and Human Services and an emergency room physician in New York. "It is never just one decision, it's never just one doctor, it's never just one nurse."
Crain and her mother, Candace Fails, "believed abortion was morally wrong," according to ProPublica. "The teen could only support it in the context of rape or life-threatening illness, she used to tell her mother. They didn't care whether the government banned it, just how their Christian faith guided their own actions."
Fails told the reporters that she still thought the doctors were obligated to do everything they could to save Crain, even if it meant losing the pregnancy, but they seemed more concerned with the fetal heartbeat. "I know it sounds selfish, and God knows I would rather have both of them, but if I had to choose," she said, "I would have chosen my daughter."
Although a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), requires emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide patients with "necessary stabilizing treatment," which the Biden-Harris administration argues includes abortions, The Associated Pressrevealed in August that over 100 patients nationwide have been "turned away or negligently treated since 2022."
Republican officials in multiple states, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have fought against the Biden-Harris administration's interpretation of EMLATA, and last month the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court decision barring emergency abortions that violate Texas law.
ProPublica's reporting on Crain's death comes as early voting is underway for the November 5 elections. American voters are set to choose the next president—former Republican President Donald Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris—and which party controls each chamber of Congress.
Democrats have heavily campaigned on reproductive freedom, highlighting that Trump appointed three of the justices behind the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that ended nationwide abortion rights and he plans to vote against a Florida ballot measure that would outlaw pre-viability abortion bans in the state, where a six-week restriction is now in effect. In September, Harris, a former U.S. senator, endorsed eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe.
The GOP controls the U.S. House of Representatives but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has held recent votes forcing Republicans to go on record against federal bills that would protect abortion care, birth control, and fertility treatments. Texas Congressman Colin Allred, the Democrat challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), took note of Crain's story on Friday.
"This is tragic. My heart goes out to Nevaeh's family," Allred said on social media. "Texas doctors can't do their jobs because of Ted Cruz's cruel abortion ban. Cruz even lobbied SCOTUS to allow states to ban life-saving emergency abortions. We can't afford six more years of Ted Cruz."
Others also responded to the new reporting by directing ire at anti-choice Republican officials working to restrict reproductive care.
"This latest story from ProPublica about Nevaeh Crain is gutting," said Cecile Richards, co-founder of Abortion in America and former president of Planned Parenthood. "She was a teenager who should be alive today, and isn't, because of Texas' abortion bans and refusal to provide lifesaving care even in a dire emergency."
Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.)—who has publicly shared her own pre-Roe abortion story—declared that "MAGA abortion bans KILL WOMEN."
Center for American Progress' Alex Wall similarly said: "This is sickening. Nevaeh Crain should be alive today. Donald Trump's MAGA abortion bans are killing women."
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, which has endorsed Harris, stressed that "these Republican monsters in Texas fought the Biden-Harris administration efforts to protect women like Nevaeh and Josseli."
"There is a special place in hell for Ken Paxton," she continued, calling out the Texas attorney general. "Make no mistake Donald Trump's abortion ban did this. We must stop him."
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Post-Dobbs Infant Mortality Spike Shows 'We Must Restore Abortion Rights'
Rep. Pramila Jayapal called the findings "a direct result of Trump's right-wing Supreme Court and extreme MAGA abortion bans."
Oct 22, 2024
In yet another example of what's at stake in the November 5 elections, now just two weeks away, researchers revealed Monday that since the U.S. Supreme Court reversedRoe v. Wade in June 2022, babies have died at a higher rate across the country.
Responding to the findings on Tuesday, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—who has publicly shared her own abortion care story—took aim at Republican nominee Donald Trump, who as president appointed three of the justices behind the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling that unleashed a GOP attack on reproductive freedom nationwide.
"The U.S. has a higher infant mortality rate than before the Dobbs decision—a direct result of Trump’s right-wing Supreme Court and extreme MAGA abortion bans," Jayapal said on social media. "Another proof point that this was never about protecting life. We must restore abortion rights."
Research published in JAMA Pediatrics in June showed "increased infant mortality in Texas following passage of Senate Bill 8, banning abortion in early pregnancy," notes the new paper, published in the same journal. "The increase appeared pronounced among infants with congenital anomalies, potentially owing to frail fetuses more often being carried to term following the implementation of abortion restrictions."
"In the seven to 14 months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, we saw a 7% increase in infant mortality, and a 10% increase in those babies born with congenital anomalies."
Parvati Singh and Maria Gallo of Ohio State University decided to examine "whether national monthly trends in infant mortality exhibit similar patterns" following Dobbs. They found that "infant mortality was higher than expected, overall and among those with congenital anomalies, for several months after the Dobbs decision in the U.S."
Specifically, "in the seven to 14 months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, we saw a 7% increase in infant mortality, and a 10% increase in those babies born with congenital anomalies," said Singh, an assistant professor of epidemiology, in a statement.
More than 20 states currently have total abortion bans or limit care at various points during the first 18 weeks of pregnancy. Over the past two years, stories of pregnant people who have been denied emergency care or even died due to state restrictions have mounted.
Though some experts warned of such consequences back in 2022, Gallo said that "I'm not sure that people expected infant mortality rates to increase following Dobbs. It's not necessarily what people were thinking about. But when you restrict access to healthcare it can cause a broader impact on public health than can be foreseen."
"Will this continue past this time period? That's an open question," the epidemiology professor added. "It could be that, yes, it will because access is shut down in some states. But it also could be that eventually more state policymakers are seeing that this isn't what people in the state want and more will pass constitutional amendments to protect access."
Both the researchers behind this paper and the lead author of the Texas study, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health demographer and perinatal epidemiologist Alison Gemmill, pointed out that the infant mortality rates might have been even higher if the latest analysis focused on states where policies changed versus national trends.
"Prior to these abortion bans, people had the option to terminate if the fetus was found to have a severe congenital anomaly—we're talking about organs being outside of the body and other things that are very severe and not compatible with life," Gemmill told the Los Angeles Times. If patients in these positions are forced continue their pregnancies, she added, "those babies would die shortly after birth."
The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her allies warn that a Trump victory in November could result in a federal ban on abortion as well as restrictions on birth control and fertility treatments.
Although the Republican has tried to deflect criticism by claiming he supports leaving such decisions to states, that approach threatens the lives and rights of people living in GOP-controlled states. Given that Trump is also a well-documented liar, critics say his public promises to leave it up to the states doesn't mean he wouldn't sign a federal abortion ban if a Republican-held Congress put one on his desk.
Trump recently said he will vote against a Florida ballot measure that would strike down the state's six-week ban and prevent similar pre-viability prohibitions.
"Because of Donald Trump, millions of women across our nation are living under Trump abortion bans and lack access to critical reproductive healthcare," Harris said last week.
"Because of Donald Trump, doctors, and nurses face potential jail time for taking care of their patients," she continued. "And because of Donald Trump, women are facing horrific consequences to their health and lives—even death. Donald Trump is the architect of this healthcare crisis. He is 'proud' of overturning Roe v. Wade and if given the chance, he will make the crisis even worse in all 50 states. We will not let that happen."
In addition to choosing the next president, U.S. voters—some of whom are already casting ballots—will pick which party controls each chamber of Congress. Last month, Harris, a former senator, endorsed eliminating the Senate filibuster to codify Roe.
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