Amber Nicole Thurman’s death from an infection in 2022 is believed to be the first confirmed maternal fatality linked to post-Roe bans.
Reproductive justice advocates have been warning for more than two years that the end of Roe v. Wade would lead to surge in maternal mortality among patients denied abortion care—and that the increase was likely to be greatest among low-income women of color. Now, a new report by ProPublica has uncovered the first such verified death. A 28-year-old medical assistant and Black single mother in Georgia died from a severe infection after a hospital delayed a routine medical procedure that had been outlawed under that state’s six-week abortion ban.
Amber Nicole Thurman’s death, in August 2022, was officially deemed “preventable” by a state committee tasked with reviewing pregnancy-related deaths. Thurman’s case is the first time a preventable abortion-related death has come to public attention since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana reported.
Now, “we actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the abortion-rights group Reproductive Freedom for All, during a call with media. “It cannot go on.”
You would think that an omnipotent being could just prevent any abortion from happening if he didn’t want them to happen.
No, no, you see it’s free will. Which makes total sense, because god can’t possibly foresee what we’re going to do, which is a problem omniscient beings definitely struggle with. Or if he can foresee what we’re going to do and he is omniscient, then he’s not omnibenevolent because he had exact foreknowledge of what was going to happen and let it anyway. After all, why “test” if you already know the precise outcome if not to watch people suffer for fun? If you need people to learn lessons, why can’t you just magically teach them those lessons? And if you’re not capable of this, how are you omnipotent?
Pick at most two of the three; you can’t have all of them.
I don’t think everyone ever claimed the Abrahamic god to be benevolent.
Christians are routinely taught that god is not just loving (“benevolent”) but all-loving (“omnibenevolent”). Here’s the Pope talking about how “tender” and “astonishing” and “gratuitous” god’s love is. 4:8 of the First Epistle of John in the Bible – part of the de jure and de facto source of truth about god for Christianity – reads: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Sure we could reduce that down to “omnibenevolent as long as you love him back”, as e.g. Proverbs 8:17 says “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.” But even then, god heavily abuses those who love him. The Bible tries to justify this bizarre cosmic domestic abuse in the book of Job, but it’s one of the most ridiculous, fucked up stories imaginable where god literally bets with Satan that he can fuck up one of his most devoted follower’s life as much as he wants and he still won’t turn away from him.