Cringe-worthy journalism wins a Pulitzer Prize

ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism for its “urgent” series on “pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague ‘life of mother’ exceptions in states with strict abortion laws,” explains the Pulitzer website.

ProPublica describes the series as “a landmark investigation into the unexamined, irreversible consequences of state abortion bans. [We] mined hospital and death records in states whose strict abortion bans threatened physicians with prosecution.”

Pulse examines their efforts in a question and answer format.

Overview

Question: Give us an example of pregnant women who “died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.”

Answer: One case cites the tragic death of Amber Thurman, who lived in Georgia. When she learned she was pregnant with twins, she made an appointment to get an abortion in North Carolina, since Georgia law prohibited abortion.

Question: Before you continue, what is Georgia’s abortion law?

Answer: Similar to Iowa’s, banning abortion at the point the fetal heartbeat is detected (as soon as 6 weeks). Limited exceptions are allowed for cases of medical emergency which threatens the mother’s life, rape, incest, and when the fetus isn’t expected to survive.

Question: Okay, so what happened to Ms. Thurman?

Answer: She missed the appointment, so the NC clinic prescribed the abortion pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol 9 weeks into her pregnancy.

Soon thereafter, she developed sepsis and sought a dilation and curettage (D & C) procedure at a Georgia hospital. She had to wait for about 20 hours before being admitted to the operating room and died soon after.

Responsibility

Question: So, who bears responsibility for this tragedy from ProPublica’s perspective?

Answer: The Supreme Court for its Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v Wade; and the Georgia Legislature for passing a fetal heartbeat law in 2022. From their perspective, this court decision and state law introduced complexity, uncertainty, and legal peril in the Georgia medical community at the expense of appropriate medical care for women. In other words, they suggest doctors are so afraid of being sued by the state that they’ll let their patients die first.

Question: Did ProPublica quote doctors involved in this case to shine light on what happened?

Answer: No. They acknowledged that “Doctors and a nurse involved in Thurman’s care declined to explain their thinking and did not respond to questions from ProPublica. Communications staff from the hospital did not respond to multiple requests for comment.”

Question: Still, isn’t ProPublica’s position at least plausible, that doctors may be gun shy at running afoul of the law in a complex case like Amber Thurman’s?

Answer: No, because the law is spelled out clearly, succinctly defining abortion as “using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy with knowledge that termination will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of an unborn child.”

Even more, it unambiguously states what is NOT an abortion, that “any such act shall not be considered an abortion if the act is performed with the purpose of: (A) Removing a dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion; or (B) Removing an ectopic pregnancy.”

SBA Pro-Life America reacted to this case by clarifying that “under EVERY pro-life law, doctors MUST intervene to save women’s lives.” [Emphasis ours.] Even more, “no state law, including Georgia’s, prevents a hospital from treating a woman in a medical emergency. A D&C to remove an unborn child that has died, or dead pregnancy tissue, is NOT an abortion (let alone a ‘felony’ or ‘criminalized’) in Georgia or anywhere.”

The real story

Question: So, what is Pulse’s takeaway of ProPublica’s Pulitzer?

Answer: Pulse executive director, Maggie DeWitte, responds: “ProPublica missed the real story here, that abortion drugs are dangerous to women as well as their babies. They’ve missed the real story, that the FDA approved a dangerous drug that sends one in 25 women to the emergency room. It’s obvious that ProPublica had an agenda and cherry-picked facts in an unsuccessful attempt to make their case. We hope this article clarifies to at-risk women just how risky taking the abortion pill really is.”

[Question: How do you support the pro-life movement? Answer: Donate to Pulse right now.]