“Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail. It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late,” reads the ProPublica report that originally released Thurman’s medical records last month. A Georgia state medical committee recently found Thurman’s death to be a direct result of the lack of abortion care offered to her by attending doctors.
Harris’s choice to illustrate the necessity of abortion care through Thurman’s story is a thoughtful one, given that Black women—who are uniquely impacted by post-Roe abortion restrictions—also make up a significant voting block in the 2024 election. Ultimately, though, Thurman’s story needs to be told not merely in the service of a campaign, but because the lifesaving care withheld from her and thousands of other women constitutes a major injustice—something that anyone who is serious about reproductive rights in the US needs to acknowledge.
