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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.
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 377,000 women who give birth, in contrast, 83 will die.) Thurman, as the report makes clear, would have almost certainly survived if she had received the pre-Dobbs standard of care, which is an immediate removal of an incomplete miscarriage. But Georgia's law, as written, makes this a felony.