From Amber Nicole Thurman to Kate Cox, these are the faces of the abortion rights battle

It’s been just over two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court ruling that guaranteed abortion access nationwide. Though some lawmakers have stressed that the decision would not ban abortion outright and instead leave abortion rights up to the states, the reality is that the ruling has significantly impacted where and how pregnant people receive reproductive care. Sometimes this includes life-saving medical treatment, which is a problem, considering that medical professionals risk their licenses or even face jail time should they not comply with their state’s guidelines on providing abortions.

Since Roe was reversed in 2022, people have spoken out about their own experiences with abortion. And with abortion being a hot-button issue for voters in the upcoming presidential election, these women and their stories are getting more attention than ever.

Hadley Duvall

In September, 22-year-old Hadley Duvall appeared in a video, released by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s campaign, in which she stated that she was impregnated at 12 years old by her stepfather after years of sexual abuse. The Kentucky resident stated: “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant at all. But I had options. Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest. Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”

Former President Trump has credited himself with overturning the federal right to an abortion. During his presidency, he stacked the Supreme Court with conservative judges who overturned Roe, leaving abortion up to the states and unleashing trigger laws that banned abortion automatically in 13 states, including Kentucky.

In 2022, Kentucky voters rejected a total abortion ban, but the fight to protect reproductive rights in the state continues.

Kate Cox

Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Texas resident, was pregnant with her third child with husband Justin Cox in 2023 when the couple learned their child was diagnosed in utero with trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal condition.

In an interview with CBS News, Cox shared, “I didn't want to watch her suffer. That would be very hard. She would have had to be placed directly on to hospice. There's no treatment that can be done.”

Abortion is banned in Texas after a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, which usually happens around six weeks into a pregnancy. State law only allows abortions if, after six weeks, a pregnant person experiences a “medical emergency,” defined as “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that, as certified by a physician, places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.” However, it can be challenging for doctors to accurately determine whether a person requires an abortion.

Cox sought an emergency abortion and was denied by the state, even though she was also concerned about her own health and well-being during the pregnancy. "We know a lot of the trisomy 18 babies don't survive birth, so I could lose her at any point in the pregnancy,” she told CBS. “There's risk of infection, risk of uterine rupture. And we want more children as well, so what does that mean for future pregnancies?"

Cox sued Texas for the right to an abortion and was granted a temporary restraining order against the state that would allow her to immediately undergo the procedure. However, last December, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Cox didn’t qualify for an abortion. Ultimately, Cox chose to leave the state for her medical procedure.

In August, while speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Cox announced that she was pregnant again.

Amber Nicole Thurman

Amber Nicole Thurman was a 28-year-old medical assistant, nursing student and single mother from Georgia who died from sepsis in 2022 after being denied timely medical care following rare complications from a medication abortion, ProPublica reported in September.

Though Thurman, who was pregnant with twins and was mom to a 6-year-old son, sought help at her Atlanta suburb hospital for a dilation and curettage (D&C) to complete the abortion, the procedure had become a felony just months earlier, so doctors hesitated to provide the procedure. Her death, per ProPublica, marks the first time a preventable abortion-related death was made public.

During a Harris campaign event on Sept. 19, Thurman’s mother, Shanette, said: “Initially, I did not want the public to know my pain. I wanted to go through in silence, but I realized that it was selfish. I want you to know, Amber was not a statistic; she was loved by a family, a strong family.”

The following day, Harris honored Thurman by name at a campaign event, calling her a woman who “worked so hard” to gain independence before her tragic, preventable death.

“Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death's door before they take action,” Harris said of the abortion ban in Georgia, which prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detectable around six weeks. Harris also described the “20 excruciating hours” Thurman had to wait before “she was in enough physical distress that doctors thought it would be OK to treat her.” At that point, however, it was “too late.”

Harris said that before her death, Thurman told her mother: “Promise me you'll take care of my son.”

The women of Zurawski v. Texas

In 2023, a group of Texas women who were denied access to abortion despite health complications, as well as ob-gyns unable to properly treat their patients, came forward to sue the state.

Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the case, was denied an emergency abortion after her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy. She developed sepsis and spent three days in the ICU, and ultimately left with damage to her reproductive system. She was joined in her lawsuit by Samantha Casiano, who was denied an abortion at 20 weeks after learning her fetus’s brain and skull did not fully develop in utero. Casiano was forced to give birth to her daughter Halo, who struggled to breathe before dying four hours later.

In addition to Zurawski and Casiano, more plaintiffs with similar stories and ob-gyns came forward to sue the state for their restrictive abortion laws. The total number of plaintiffs reached 22.

In May, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas, upholding the state's abortion restrictions. The lawsuit is the subject of the documentary Zurawski v. Texas, which was co-executive produced by Hillary Clinton.

Jaci Statton

Jaci Statton, of Oklahoma, was 25 years old and in pain in 2023 when she learned from her ob-gyn she was suffering from a partial molar pregnancy, in which abnormal tissue, instead of a viable fetus, forms inside the uterus. Oklahoma has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, making it impossible to terminate a pregnancy unless it endangers a woman’s life.

However, whether a pregnancy threatened Statton’s life was apparently up for debate, and the medical professionals at the hospital where she sought care did not want to risk intervening. Statton was told to wait in the parking lot of the hospital.

"They were very sincere; they weren't trying to be mean," Statton told NPR. "They said, 'The best we can tell you to do is sit in the parking lot, and if anything else happens, we will be ready to help you. But we cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack.'"

Statton ultimately sought treatment in another state, but she filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). This act, passed in 1986, states that doctors must stabilize or treat any patient who shows up at an emergency room. The law was originally put in place to avoid so-called “patient dumping,” in which hospitals would send away patients without insurance despite health issues or life-threatening conditions. Now, EMTALA applies to any ER that receives Medicare funding, and hospitals that violate the law may receive civil penalties and face lawsuits, as well as possibly lose their Medicare status.

However, HHS denied Statton’s complaint, stating that no violation of EMTALA occurred. Her legal battle underscored the ongoing challenges of applying EMTALA in the wake of strict state abortion bans, highlighting that while abortion bans may have exceptions for saving a woman’s life, they are not easy to enforce.

Kaitlyn Joshua

Louisiana resident Kaitlyn Joshua first went public with her own miscarriage story in 2022, after the overturning of Roe, and has been an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights ever since. She is currently on the road with Harris’s Fight for Reproductive Freedoms bus and is sharing her story in key battleground states. She recently spoke at the DNC about doctors refusing to treat her miscarriage because such treatment might involve the abortion pill mifepristone, which could potentially come with criminal charges.

“I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life,” Joshua said. “No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have.”

Joshua went viral again in September, when The Right Stuff dating app founder John McEntee (who is also an architect of the controversial Project 2025 plan) posted a TikTok questioning the existence of the “women bleeding out in parking lots” that Harris had referred to in her debate against Trump.

Joshua, in a video stitched with Entee’s TikTok, responded to the dating app founder’s video with her truth.

"I’m one of the women Vice President Harris referred to in her debate,” Joshua said in a TikTok video shared to the Harris campaign account. “My husband and I faced a health care crisis when I was seeking emergency care during a miscarriage. I was denied care at two hospitals in Louisiana due to Donald Trump’s abortion ban. Donald Trump continues to brag about being responsible for this. If he’s reelected, his Project 2025 plan will ban abortion nationwide. We must ensure this doesn’t happen by electing Kamala Harris for president." (Trump has denied having connections to Project 2025.)

The women of TikTok

Joshua, whose post on TikTok received more than 1.7 million likes, wasn’t the only person who spoke out against Entee’s comment.

“My daughter nearly lost her life after miscarrying triplets that didn’t expel her body & 3 hospitals wouldn’t remove them,” one person wrote in a TikTok.

“Ectopic pregnancy survivor,” another shared. “Sat in the ER while my doctor called her attorney to find out if I could receive medicine or if I had to wait until I bled internally to help me.”

“Stepped out of my car and immediately was in a puddle of my own blood,” a commenter posted. “I had already suffered a miscarriage but pieces were still in. Had to have a D&C.”

They were among many dozens of comments on Entee’s video from women who struggled in the wake of rolled-back reproductive rights.