‘Grief and loss’ unite mom, sister of women who died after incomplete abortions

“No one talks about what happens, when these kind of decisions are made, to the women and the children and the families that are left behind because someone decides what we should do with our bodies,” Tomlin-Randall said Saturday.

Miller was one of two women who died from abortion-related complications in 2022 shortly after Georgia’s abortion law took effect. The deaths of Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman were first reported by nonprofit news organization ProPublica in September.

Tomlin-Randall and Shanette Williams, Thurman’s mother, were recognized by Planned Parenthood Southeast during the abortion-rights group’s annual fundraising dinner.

The deaths of Thurman and Miller were deemed to be preventable, according to a review by the state panel that studies maternal mortalities. That panel was created in response to Georgia having one of the highest rates of women dying during pregnancy, delivery or in the year after giving birth.

Miller, a 41-year-old mother of three, died in November 2022, months after Georgia’s abortion ban took effect. She had ordered abortion pills online from overseas and tried to terminate her pregnancy at home.

Miller’s family said she was afraid of going to doctors for help once it was clear the abortion was incomplete. She died at home a few days later.

Thurman was 28 when she sought the hospital’s help after traveling to North Carolina and taking abortion pills in 2022. She was about nine weeks pregnant with twins at the time. She already was the mother of a little boy, who was 6 at the time.

When the abortion didn’t complete, Thurman developed sepsis. Twenty hours after she arrived at the emergency room, her heart stopped on the operating table. Thurman’s death took place two weeks after Georgia’s anti-abortion law took effect in 2022.

Williams and Tomlin-Randall have connected through the grief of losing their loved ones, and they are planning to turn their grief into advocacy. The women are preparing to launch a podcast, called “We Talk About It,” next month where they discuss and process their grief.

Williams said she had been wanting to do more with the opportunity that’s been given to her in the wake of her daughter’s death to reach those in the Black community who aren’t as invested in politics or civic engagement.

“We have platforms where we’re able to speak out, but those platforms are basically not consistent,” she said of the media attention that has come and gone in the months since the first reports of her daughter’s death.

“I really have a disdain for media for the simple reason that it’s a hot topic when it’s a hot topic, right? And then when it’s over, it’s over. It’s over, but the fight never ends.”

Williams and Tomlin-Randall said she thinks the podcast will be a good way for them to channel their grief.

“Keep in mind, death brought us together. Grief and loss brought us together,” Williams said.

“And the title of the first podcast is ‘Sisters by Loss, Warriors by Choice,’” Tomlin-Randall said. “We have a choice and a mission. And we have an obligation to our loved ones.”

The long-planned event by Planned Parenthood was held days after news of a Georgia woman, Adriana Smith, who was declared brain-dead in February but is being kept alive artificially because she is pregnant, according to her family. Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told reporters that doctors said Smith had to remain on life support to protect her fetus, now at about 21 weeks, because of Georgia’s restrictions on abortion.

Because Smith was nine weeks pregnant at the time, and the embryo had detectable cardiac activity, Newkirk said doctors have kept Smith on life support for more than 90 days.

“Many of you may have seen the heartbreaking news about Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Georgia woman who has been declared brain-dead and is being kept on life support solely because she is pregnant,” said Mairo Akposé, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast. “This pain is tragically familiar — it echoes the profound loss experienced by the families of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, whom we honor tonight.”

Faye Wattleton, an abortion rights activist and Planned Parenthood president who served from 1978 to 1992, served as the night’s keynote speaker. She said in an interview that the climate has returned to what life was like for those seeking abortions before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.

“What’s happening now is what happened to doctors before the (U.S.) Supreme Court said that this should be a matter left to the woman and those that guide her personal and moral values,” Wattleton said.

“Before Roe v. Wade, doctors were persecuted and prosecuted, losing their medical licenses — and women died,” she said. “That’s what we’re seeing now. The question is, how bad is it going to have to get before there is a sense that we cannot yield to this kind of oppression of women?”

The room of about 250 included advocates and several Democratic elected officials and candidates who came together to raise money for Planned Parenthood as the federal government threatens to cut funding to the organization. They raised about $255,000 by the end of the night.

“We’re in the most hostile territory for reproductive rights in the country, and we’re being demonized at every level of government,” Planned Parenthood Southeast Board of Directors Chair Karen Doolittle said. “But we still show up because the people of Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi depend on us.”