Amber Thurman’s family condemns Republicans over abortion after vice president debate

On the debate stage Tuesday night, Sen. JD Vance agreed with his opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, that a woman who died of abortion complications in 2022 due to Georgia’s draconian abortion ban should still be alive.

“Governor, I agree with you,” the Republican vice presidential nominee said. “Amber Thurman should still be alive – and there are a lot of people who should still be alive – and I certainly wish she was.”

Vance’s admission that Thurman had died is avoidable, and his expressed desire for the GOP to “regain the people’s trust” on abortion does not sit well with Republican lawmakers who are actively restricting people’s ability to make such decisions for themselves. After the debate, Thurman’s family released a statement condemning Republicans for “further restricting women’s access to necessary health care under the false guise of protection.”

“Amber’s tragic death was a direct result of Georgia’s outdated and dangerously restrictive abortion laws, which denied her the life-saving care she so desperately needed,” Thurman’s family said. “We mourn an unimaginable loss that no family should have to endure.”

In the debate, Vance said that the American people “just don’t trust Republicans” when it comes to abortion and that he wanted Republicans to become “pro-family in every sense of the word.” He also claimed that he did it has never supported a federal abortion ban (though Vance said as recently as 2022 that he “would like abortion to be illegal at the national level”) and defended overturning Roe v. Wade.

After lamenting Thurman’s death, Vance immediately spoke of “partial birth abortion,” a highly misleading political term that refers to an abortion that occurs later in pregnancy. He also claimed that allowing states to enforce their own abortion laws was the right thing to do, even though that was the very circumstance that led to Thurman’s death.