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Two Dead Women Aren’t Enough for Republicans to Back Lifesaving Abortions

The GOP blocked a bill for emergency abortion care—and sent women a loud, clear message.

Julianne McShane

Two women who died in Georgia as a result of the state’s post-Dobbs abortion ban are, apparently, not enough to make Republicans agree that all Americans should have access to abortion in emergencies.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked a resolution that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) introduced to guarantee abortion access to protect a pregnant person’s life, including in the nearly two dozen states that have implemented bans or restrictions since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. The move followed a pair of reports from ProPublica, published last week, that documented the 2022 deaths of two Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who were unable to obtain a routine procedure—a dilation and curettage—to clear unexpelled fetal tissue from their uteruses after taking abortion pills and experiencing rare complications. While Miller died at home, having been scared to go to the hospital after taking abortion pills, ProPublica reported that Thurman died in a hospital after doctors waited 20 hours to perform the necessary procedure, which state law had made a felony with few exceptions. The stories led to widespread condemnation, including from Vice President Kamala Harris, as my colleague Pema Levy covered.

“I’m not going to let any of my Republican colleagues off the hook just for saying they care about the life the mother—not if they won’t lift the finger to actually protect women and to actually make clear that emergency care can include abortion,” Murray said on the Senate floor.

The essence of the resolution—which states “that every person has the basic right to emergency health care, including abortion care,” and which 40 Democrats co-sponsored—was essentially the argument at issue in the Supreme Court case Moyle v. United States. In that case, decided in June, the justices ultimately allowed emergency abortions to continue in Idaho, where a near-total abortion ban is in effect, but did not rule on whether other state abortion bans conflict with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which mandates hospitals provide stabilizing treatment to anyone who needs it.

As Murray noted, Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths are likely not the only ones attributable to abortion bans: Maternal deaths in Texas, where a total abortion ban is in place, rose 56 percent—compared to 11 percent nationwide—after its six-week ban was implemented in 2021, NBC News reported last week. “The data in Texas paints a clear, brutal picture of the reality these abortion bans are killing women,” Murray said.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who objected to Murray’s resolution on behalf of Republicans, responded in the way the right often has to such attacks: by insisting that Democrats are the problem, and by falsely claiming that abortion pills are dangerous—despite the fact that more than 100 scientific studies have affirmed their safety and efficacy, including one published earlier this year that showed them to be just as safe when prescribed virtually and mailed as when prescribed and administered in person. (Several anti-abortion activists on the right have similarly alleged that abortion pills caused Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths, even though—as the ProPublica stories note—complications from the pills are exceptionally rare, and a routine procedure could have likely changed the tragic outcomes.)

In insisting that the resolution was unnecessary, Lankford made several other false claims, including that “no state criminalizes miscarriage” (in fact, that’s provably false, and women have been charged with homicide after miscarriages) and that it’s “political rhetoric” from abortion rights advocates like Harris that is to blame for scaring doctors about the repercussions they could face under abortion bans (in fact, it’s Republican legislation—like the Georgia law—that explicitly threatens doctors with fines and jail time if they perform abortions).

The truth is, in fact, much simpler than Lankford suggested. As Murray said in response to Lankford’s opposition: “Here in America, in the 21st century, pregnant women are suffering and dying—not because doctors don’t know how to save them, but because doctors don’t know if Republicans will let them.”

Senate Republicans on Tuesday also blocked a bill introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) that would have appropriated $350 million annually through 2028 to help with travel costs for people who have to travel out of state to access abortion; in his objection, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) derided it as an “elective abortion travel slush fund” for “radical abortion groups.” Lest you forget, Senate Republicans also twice blocked a vote on a bill that would have guaranteed IVF access nationwide from coming up for a vote, and in June blocked another bill to guarantee federal access to contraception.

All this, keep in mind, is coming from the party whose presidential nominee pledges he’ll make women great again.