Hillary Clinton tried to fire off a warning shot about abortion laws, but Facebook users hit back — with receipts.
On the anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Clinton took to Facebook, blaming President Donald Trump’s “far-right Supreme Court majority” for the loss of federal abortion rights and citing the tragic death of a woman named Amber Nicole Thurman.
“Three years ago today, Trump’s far-right Supreme Court majority ended Americans’ federal right to abortion under Roe v. Wade,” Clinton wrote the June post. “Since then, over 100 women have been denied emergency abortion care. One of them, Amber Nicole Thurman, was only 28 and left behind a son. Today, share her story — which you can find at ProPublica — and keep fighting for reproductive freedom for all.”
But that is when Facebook’s Community Notes system, now user-driven and designed to curb misleading claims, stepped in.
“Amber Thurman, 28, died from infection after taking abortion pills in NC. She went to a Georgia hospital when she became seriously ill,” the note explained. “Doctors delayed a needed D and C for nearly 20 hours despite Georgia law allowing emergency care. Her death was ruled preventable. Her family is suing for wrongful death and medical malpractice.”
Attorney Ben Crump, who represented Thurman’s family, was also quoted in the community note, saying, “The law did not stop care, inaction did.”
As the Daily Wire reports, Thurman had taken abortion pills to end a twin pregnancy. The babies had already died by the time she arrived at the hospital, and she was not seeking an abortion at that point. But her uterus still contained fetal tissue, which caused a deadly infection. The doctors reportedly waited nearly a whole day to perform the D&C that could have saved her life.
Even ProPublica, the outlet Clinton directed people to, admitted in its report — paragraph 57, no less — that “it is not clear from the records available why doctors waited to provide a D&C to Thurman, though the summary report shows they discussed the procedure at least twice in the hours before they finally did.”
ProRepublica also writes: “Piedmont did not have a policy to guide doctors on how to interpret the state abortion ban when Thurman arrived for care, according to two people with knowledge of internal conversations who were not authorized to speak publicly. In the months after she died, an internal task force of providers there created policies to educate staff on how to navigate the law, though they are not able to give legal advice, the sources said.”
The outlet continues to write on Georgia’s exemptions:
“It prohibits doctors from using any instrument ‘with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy.’ While removing fetal tissue is not terminating a pregnancy, medically speaking, the law only specifies it’s not considered an abortion to remove ‘a dead unborn child’ that resulted from a ‘spontaneous abortion’ defined as ‘naturally occurring’ from a miscarriage or a stillbirth.
Thurman had told doctors her miscarriage was not spontaneous — it was the result of taking pills to terminate her pregnancy.
There is also an exception, included in most bans, to allow abortions ‘necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.’ There is no standard protocol for how providers should interpret such language, doctors said. How can they be sure a jury with no medical experience would agree that intervening was ‘necessary’?”
Heading into the 2024 election, Democrats and abortion-rights activists tried to paint red-state abortion laws as directly responsible for tragic deaths like Thurman’s. Trump, despite repeated accusations, stated clearly he would not push for a national abortion ban.
