It is only by bearing witness to the concrete impact of bad policymaking that we can build a world where life is valued in practice, not merely in theory.
A 6-year-old boy faces life without his mother, Amber Nicole Thurman, because of an abortion ban.
“Amber was not a statistic. She was loved by a family, a strong family,” Thurman’s mother urged Americans to remember at a town hall with Oprah and Vice President Kamala Harris last month. “She should still be here.”
At just 28 years old, Thurman had just moved into a new apartment and had plans for a nursing career. The abortion ban in her state stopped doctors from providing life-saving healthcare to her when she needed it. After suffering for 20 hours, Thurman died from sepsis.
This is far from the only tragic case in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Look no further than the story of Candi Miller, who died at home with her 3-year-old daughter beside her, after her teenage son watched her suffer for days. His mother was afraid to seek the care she needed for fear of prosecution under the ban Georgia had in place. (In a win for reproductive rights, Georgia’s six-week abortion ban was finally struck down on Monday, Sept. 30.)
Imagine the rage you would feel if you knew she could have been saved, but some politician did not care enough about her life to write a clear, evidence-based law that protected it.
Two weeks after the public learned of Thurman and Miller’s deaths, news broke of 26-year-old Taysha Wilkinson-Sobieski’s death. Newly married and living in Indiana with her husband and young son, Wilkinson-Sobieski suffered when she could not access timely reproductive healthcare for an ectopic pregnancy.
Experts attribute her death to Indiana’s lack of gynecological healthcare resources (in part due to the exodus of OB-GYNs from red states after the Dobbs decision) and its restrictive abortion laws.
People often tell grieving children that they “cannot imagine” the pain of losing a mother at such a young age. As someone who lost my mother as a teenager and who worked with grieving children as a volunteer, I implore you to try.
Think of every time your mother guided, supported and loved you. Picture each of these moments being robbed from you, relegated instead to your memory or to wondering what might have been. Or—in the case of Miller’s 3-year-old daughter—imagine being robbed of the chance to know your mother at all, relying on photographs and the memories of others.
Imagine the powerless feeling of watching your mother’s last moments, wishing you could save her. Imagine the rage you would feel if you knew she could have been saved, but some politician did not care enough about her life to write a clear, evidence-based law that protected it. Imagine the devastation of knowing that she suffered needlessly, as these women suffered. Imagine if it was your sister, your wife or your daughter.
Imagine if it was you. You, holding your children—your 3-year old, your 6-year old, your teen—wondering if you will ever see them again. Worrying about who will care for your children if you die. Will they be okay?
In Amber’s last words, spoken to her mother, this fear was clear as day: “Promise me you’ll take care of my son.”
As you read this, there are families who do not need to imagine. In the year since Wilkinson-Sobieski’s tragic death, more mothers have died because of abortion bans.
- Pregnant, laboring and newly postpartum patients are three times more likely to die from maternal health complications if their state bans abortion.
- In Texas—which has some of the most restrictive bans on care—there was a striking 56 percent rise in maternal mortality from 2019 to 2022, compared with an 11 percent rise nationwide. Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick of Luling, Texas—who died on July 10, 2022, after being denied an abortion—was one of those would-be mothers.
- A national abortion ban would increase maternal mortality by 24 percent across the United States, researchers have found.
When Thurman’s mother implored us to remember that her daughter was not a statistic, she was expressing a legitimate fear. What will happen when Thurman is one of hundreds or thousands of stories? Will the public remember that each individual is loved and missed? Will we remember the children left behind?
Forgetting is so much more comfortable, but it will never save lives. Empathy will. Organizing will. Voting will.
What happens when the news cycle moves on? Will we say their names? Will we honor them with action, or will we choose to forget?
Forgetting is so much more comfortable, but it will never save lives. Empathy will. Organizing will. Voting will.
Each death we see in the news is an entire world, gone. Every family member will grieve in a unique way, but the effects of that loss will reverberate throughout their family forever. If we avoid thinking about grief, we will not address pressing issues with the urgency required of us. It is only by bearing witness to the concrete impact of bad policymaking that we can build a world where life is valued in practice, not merely in theory.
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