-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email This article originally appeared on ProPublica . Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her. “They said it was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.
But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy. At 41, Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension and didn’t want to wait until the situation became dire.
So she avoided doctors and navigated an abortion on her own — a path many health experts feared would increase risks when women in America lost the constitutional right to obtain legal, medically supervised abortions. Related States with restrictive abortion laws will suffer long-term economic harm from forced childbirth Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages.
In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions. Her teenage son watched her suffer.