On the evening of August 19, 2025, a somber crowd gathered at the Free & Just mural in Atlanta, Georgia. Candles flickered in the humid summer air as Shanette Williams and Turiya Tomlin-Randall, joined by community members and local leaders, honored the memories of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller—two women whose deaths, according to ProPublica, were preventable tragedies directly linked to Georgia’s abortion ban. The vigil marked the third anniversary of Thurman’s passing, a date that has come to symbolize both personal loss and the broader crisis facing maternal health in the state and across the country.
As reported by ProPublica in November 2024, both Thurman and Miller died after being denied timely medical care due to Georgia’s restrictive abortion laws. These findings were corroborated by Georgia’s own Maternal Mortality Review Committee, whose reports concluded that the women’s deaths could have been avoided. The heartbreak for families was compounded by a lack of transparency—Williams only learned the details of her daughter’s death after investigative journalists brought the story to light. In a move that drew widespread criticism, Georgia officials responded to the report not by addressing the underlying issues but by dismissing the entire Maternal Mortality Review Committee, effectively shuttering a key avenue for understanding and preventing future tragedies.
Georgia’s actions have not gone unnoticed. Health advocates and grieving families argue that rather than working to improve outcomes—especially for Black women, who face disproportionately high maternal mortality rates—state authorities are making it more difficult to track and address pregnancy-related deaths. According to event organizers and echoed by Free & Just, the vigil was not only a moment of remembrance but a call to demand justice and transparency for all those impacted by abortion bans.
The crisis in Georgia is emblematic of a much larger national problem. A recent study published in JAMA found a 4% decline in OB-GYN practitioners per 100,000 reproductive-age women in states with the most restrictive abortion laws, while states with no new restrictions saw no such decline. Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade, states across the South and Midwest have enacted increasingly severe abortion bans. The result? A growing exodus of OB-GYNs from these states, leaving behind what the March of Dimes calls “maternity care deserts”—counties with no hospitals or birth centers offering obstetric care and no obstetric clinicians.
“People don’t want to go to a place where evidence-based practice and human rights in general are curtailed,” Beverly Gray, a professor at Duke University School of Medicine, told KFF Health News. That sentiment is borne out in the numbers: during the 2023–2024 residency application cycle, abortion-ban states saw a 6.7% drop in OB-GYN residency applications, while states with legal abortion saw a slight 0.4% increase. For aspiring doctors, the message is clear—restrictive laws are not just a political statement, but a professional and ethical minefield.
Providers in states like Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, and South Carolina report living in a state of constant anxiety. Sixty percent say they fear legal retaliation for providing care in pregnancy emergencies or miscarriages, and nearly 40% admit to limiting such care to avoid prosecution. Some training programs in these states are now at risk of losing accreditation, forcing residents to leave their home states to finish their education. The chilling effect is real and immediate, with one Tennessee doctor—formerly one of just eight abortion providers statewide—choosing to leave rather than risk her license or conscience.
The consequences of these provider shortages are dire. Maternal death rates in states with restrictive abortion laws are 62% higher than in states where abortion remains accessible, and perinatal mortality is 15% higher, according to the JAMA study. Access to prenatal care is slipping: in 2023, early and adequate care fell from 77% to 76.1%, while the percentage of people receiving no prenatal care at all rose by 5%. These trends hit hardest in the South, where states like Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina—already home to large Black populations—lead the nation in maternal mortality. Mississippi’s maternal death rate recently reached 82.5 per 100,000 live births, while Louisiana’s stands at 60.9, both among the highest nationwide.
The racial disparities are stark and persistent. Nationally, Black women face maternal mortality rates approximately 2.6 times higher than white women (49.5 versus 19.0 per 100,000 in 2022). In rural Georgia, Black women experience maternal mortality rates double that of their rural white counterparts and 30% higher than urban Black women, according to JAMA and ProPublica. These statistics are not just numbers—they represent families shattered and communities left reeling.
Abortion bans, advocates argue, are not isolated pieces of legislation. They are part of a web of policies that disrupt entire systems of reproductive healthcare, force providers out, decrease training opportunities, and undermine trust between patients and clinicians. The result is a worsening of health disparities, especially for communities of color in the South, and a growing sense of crisis among those on the front lines.
Meanwhile, the political battle over reproductive rights rages on. In Indiana, WNBA stars Kelsey Mitchell and Brianna Turner of the Indiana Fever are set to headline an abortion rights fundraising event, “Playing With Our Lives,” on August 21 in Carmel. Hosted by the Indiana Reproductive Freedom PAC, the event aims to rally support for protecting and expanding reproductive healthcare access in the wake of a recent Indiana Court of Appeals decision upholding the state’s near-total abortion ban. Mitchell, celebrated for her 38-point performance on August 17 and her advocacy for contraceptive access, will join Turner, a mentor for the WNBA Changemaker Collective and holder of a master’s degree in social justice and human rights, along with leaders from Navigate Maternity, an organization championing equity in birthing experiences.
“This is a moment to bring our community together around truth, action and the shared belief that women deserve equal access to reproductive health care,” said Liane Hulka, Executive Director of Indiana Reproductive Freedom PAC, in a press release covered by Indianapolis Star. The event, which offers tickets ranging from $150 to $10,000, will channel proceeds into supporting political campaigns committed to safeguarding reproductive rights in Indiana—a state now at the center of the national debate.
Back in Atlanta, the vigil for Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller served as both a memorial and a warning. As abortion bans proliferate and healthcare deserts spread, families, advocates, and providers are left to pick up the pieces, even as the path to reform grows steeper. The stakes, as those gathered at the mural know all too well, are nothing less than life and death.
