A left-leaning media outlet recently publicized the heartbreaking stories of two Georgia women who died following failed abortions. Amber Thurman, 28 years old and nine weeks pregnant with twins, was given abortion drugs at a facility in North Carolina after she ran late for a surgical abortion appointment. Similarly, 41-year-old Candi Miller had multiple medical conditions including lupus that can make pregnancy risky; instead of going to a doctor, she ordered abortion drugs online. In both cases, the drugs failed to clear the uterus of tissue, which can lead to severe infection. Both women suffered for days before their deaths – one receiving totally inadequate treatment at a Georgia hospital and one too afraid to go to the hospital at all.

The outcry was immediate. Everyone agrees these women didn’t have to die – but not on why. Pro-life advocates recognize their tragic deaths and those of their unborn children as a result of complications from dangerous abortion drugs, together with unnecessarily delayed emergency treatment. Politicians and media with a different agenda seized on their stories to point the finger of blame at Georgia’s pro-life law that protects babies with detectable heartbeats. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who is the first sitting vice president to tour an abortion center, even planned a speech in Georgia around this false narrative.

Here’s the truth, based on the publicly available facts.

Amber Thurman’s symptoms – uterine tenderness and odor, low blood pressure, elevated white blood cell count – clearly indicate sepsis. She needed and should have received a D&C (dilation and curettage) to clear her uterus of the infected tissue, a simple procedure used for many gynecological reasons that have nothing to do with abortion. But her physicians apparently did not recognize the urgency of her situation until it was too late – possibly because abortion advocates misrepresent abortion drugs as “safe and effective” and discourage women from telling ER doctors that they had a DIY abortion. In a blatant falsehood, the article that revealed Thurman’s death described the D&C procedure itself as “criminalized” in Georgia. A straightforward reading of the law, which provides for exceptions “in the event of a medical emergency” when there is a heartbeat or to remove a dead unborn child when there is not, shows this is just not true.