If there was an award for the sleaziest news operation, ProPublica would hold its own against the sleaziest tabloids.
As one example, the nonprofit media group ran a shockingly disingenuous op-ed last week blaming the U.S. Supreme Court and the Georgia state legislature for a deadly decision in 2022 when an Atlanta-area hospital failed to provide timely assistance to a young mother who developed a life-threatening infection after a chemical abortion. The op-ed argued that if Roe v. Wade had not been overturned, Amber Nicole Thurman would still be alive today.
The article offered no evidence that this was true, but the story went national regardless, enough so that Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about it in Georgia on Friday.
Thurman discovered she was pregnant with twins when she was six weeks pregnant and had forgotten to book an appointment with an abortion clinic in North Carolina, which gave her prescription abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, assuring her the drugs were completely safe.
Thurman developed sepsis shortly after starting the regimen around the ninth week of her pregnancy. Her condition worsened, and she underwent a routine D&C procedure at Piedmont Henry Hospital in Georgia. Somehow, 20 hours passed before she made it into the operating room. Thurman died shortly thereafter. She is survived by a 6-year-old son.
ProPublica reports that the two states most responsible for Thurman's death are the state of Georgia, which passed its six-week fetal heartbeat law in 2022, and the Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
This is nonsense pushed in an election year by organizations bent on undermining confidence in the nation’s highest court.
“Abortion ban delays emergency medical care; Georgia experts say this mother's death could have been prevented,” reads the headline published on Sept. 16. ProPublica. “At least two Georgia women have died after lacking access to legal abortions or adequate medical care in the state, a ProPublica investigation has found.”
Rival media quickly jumped on ProPublica's “report.” Atlantic Ocean (“The Women Killed by the Dobbs Decision”) Country (“Abortion laws killed Amber Thurman — and probably many more.”) Newsweek (“Amber Thurman is first named 'preventable' abortion death since ban”). The New York Times (“It was only a matter of time before the abortion ban killed someone.”)
If only these media outlets would put as much effort into double-checking their own articles as they do into plagiarizing each other's.
ProPublica's central argument is that the state of Georgia and the Supreme Court have created a legal minefield that leaves doctors scared and confused and unable to provide safe, competent, and timely medical care — so confused, in fact, that doctors in Georgia and other states would rather ignore the first rule of the Hippocratic Oath and let their patients die than face possible criminal charges, the story goes.
However, the ProPublica article never actually quotes or even mentions any doctors directly involved in Thurman's treatment as having made such statements — it simply quotes third-party “experts” who theorize, or rather speculate, that Dobbs and the heartbeat technique (probably) caused the young woman's death.
It's a shame we don't get to hear directly from Thurman's doctor, because at least a few of us would like to know what part of Georgia's abortion law so confused and terrified a doctor that he ignored a septic patient for nearly an entire day.
For reference, Georgia Abortion Laws Abortion is defined as “the use, prescription, or administration of an instrument, substance, device, or other means with the intent to terminate a pregnancy, knowing that such termination is likely to result in the death of the fetus,” except that it specifically provides that “an act performed with the intent to (A) remove a fetus that has died by spontaneous abortion, or (B) remove an ectopic pregnancy, is not considered an abortion.”
Atlantic magazine reporter Helen Lewis asserted that “Thurman received poor medical treatment because her doctors feared they would be prosecuted if they drugged her.” [dilation and curettage]This is an outrageous claim, not just because there is no state in which this procedure is illegal under these exact circumstances, but because, and this cannot be emphasized enough, no medical professional directly involved in the Thurman case has ever said such a thing.
“America is a litigious country,” Lewis argues, “and in a situation like this, doctors have every right to fear lawsuits.”
Then again, what are Thurman's doctors saying about the 20-hour wait? We have no idea.
The ProPublica article also explicitly acknowledges that “the doctors and nurses involved in Thurman's treatment declined to discuss their views and did not respond to questions from ProPublica, and a hospital spokesman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.”
But if, as ProPublica itself admits, we have no idea what the thinking was behind the delay in Thurman's treatment, then how do we explain this opening statement: “She had taken the abortion pill and encountered a rare complication: she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital needing a dilation and curettage (D&C), a routine procedure to remove fetal tissue from the uterus. But just that summer, her state made it a felony to perform the procedure, with few exceptions. Doctors who violate Georgia's new law can be prosecuted and face up to 10 years in prison. It took 20 hours before the doctor finally performed the procedure. By that time it was too late.”
There has been no explanation for the 20 hour wait period. Not even an official statement or background. This is pure speculation and the all too blatant suggestion that Piedmont hesitated because of Dobbs and state law. To be clear, speculation and reporting are two different things.
Speaking of speaking publicly with doctors, here are some public comments from Christina Francis, an obstetrician-gynecologist who practices in the profession and is CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists: Atlanta Journal-Constitution:[T]The state's abortion law did not prevent her life from being saved…The law explicitly allows physicians to intervene in cases of medical emergencies or when a fetal heartbeat cannot be detected (both of which were the case in Thurman's case), and the claim that she experienced a delay in treatment as a secondary effect of the law is mere speculation. One thing is clear: Thurman died from a legal chemical abortion, and abortion advocates have long argued that this was “a false alarm.”safetyeBetter than TylenolThurman's story, along with the stories of countless other women, proves the opposite.”
If anything, Thurman's story was about medical malpractice, not state or federal abortion law, but ProPublica's position is that why tell a local story when you can capitalize on a politically salient issue? Donation checks aren't just written.
Beckett Adams is a Washington-based author.National Journalism Centre.
