Georgia axes maternal health panel after leak about abortion deaths

In a letter sent to members of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC), Georgia health commissioner Kathleen Toomey said an investigation failed to identify those responsible for the leak, so all current members would be removed.

The news - first reported by ProPublica - comes two months after the outlet published stories on the deaths of two women the panel ruled were preventable and linked to the state's strict abortion ban.

The women's stories became a rallying call for reproductive rights advocates and was cited often by Democrats during the US election.

Since June 2022, Georgia has prohibited all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women might not know they are pregnant, except in cases of rape, incest or when necessary to prevent "irreversible physical impairment" or death of the mother.

Amber Thurman, 28, and Candi Miller, 41, both died that same year, following rare complications involving the FDA-approved abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol prescribed from out of state.

Thurman waited 19 hours at a Georgia hospital before doctors performed a rare procedure - prohibited by the state abortion ban with few exceptions - needed to expel fetal tissue from the uterus that had not been fully cleared by the abortion pills.

By the time she was taken into surgery, Thurman had developed acute sepsis. She died on the surgery table.

Miller, a mother of three, died at home. Her family reportedly told the coroner she did not see a doctor because of the current laws in the state.

Tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, the panel of experts, which includes 10 doctors, deemed her death “preventable” and said the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure had a “large” impact on her fatal outcome.

“The fact that she felt that she had to make these decisions, that she didn’t have adequate choices here in Georgia, we felt that definitely influenced her case,” one committee member told ProPublica in September. “She’s absolutely responding to this legislation.”

A spokeswoman for the state health commissioner declined to comment to the BBC on the dissolution of the task force, saying only that "the letter speaks for itself".

And commissioner Toomey's office would not say whether the move was specifically linked to the ProPublica report. Governor Brian Kemp's office referred all questions to the health department.

In her letter, Toomey said that their investigation failed to find who leaked information and "effective immediately the current MMRC is disbanded".

She said that all new member seats would be filled through a new application process, writing that on-boarding processes for "better ensuring confidentiality" would be considered.

ProPublica's reporting on Thurman and Miller, published in September, drew widespread outrage especially among pro-choice activists who argue strict abortion bans put women's lives in danger.

The news of MMRC's dismissal incited further rebuke this week among pro-choice advocates, who claimed it was an effort to silence warning about the dangers of abortion bans.

In a statement, the director Reproductive Freedom for All Georgia Alicia Stallworth called the move "a scare tactic meant to stop full investigations into the circumstances of pregnant women’s deaths across the state".

"We won't succumb to this fear baiting," Stallworth said.

Committees to investigate maternal deaths exist in every state. Georgia's now-disbanded panel featured more than 30 experts, including 10 medical doctors.

Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the US, the only industrialised country in the world where rates of infant and maternal mortality are growing.

The issue came more into focus after the repeal of Roe v Wade in 2022 by the US Supreme Court, which rolled back the constitutional right to an abortion across the US and instead shifted to decision to states.

-BBC