Maternal Health Experts Blame Candi Miller’s Death on Georgia’s Abortion Ban
Candi Miller, a 41-year-old mother of two, was too afraid to go to the hospital after unintentionally getting pregnant in fall of 2022.
Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension. She was previously warned by doctors that having another baby could kill her.
Because of the Georgia’s then-months-old abortion ban, Miller didn’t want to wait for her health to worsen; the ban makes a few exceptions for life-threatening emergencies but did not account for chronic conditions like Miller’s.
She ordered abortion pills online and faced a rare complication: her body did not expel all of the fetal tissue. She stayed home with the pain of a sepsis infection as a result. Her family told ProPublica that she avoided the hospital, “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.” Miller needed a dilation and curettage, or D&C, a standard medical procedure for miscarriages and abortion. However, the state’s ban made performing it a felony.
Miller died on Nov. 12, 2022. Her teenage son watched her suffer for days after taking the abortion pills and developing an infection. The morning she passed, her husband found Miller unresponsive in bed next to her 3-year-old daughter.
A maternal health committee that reviewed her death called it “preventable” and blamed the state’s abortion ban.
“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. “She’s absolutely responding to this legislation.”
Miller became the second, public preventable abortion death in Georgia. Her case was made public the same week as Amber Thurman’s. Thurman was a 28-year-old mother who waited 20 hours for a D&C to treat sepsis from an incomplete abortion. By time doctors started operating, it was too late.
There are almost certainly more preventable deaths related to the abortion ban, as the stories of these two mothers help reveal the truth of the legislation: it has not protected the “life of the mother,” which is listed as one of the exceptions.
Miller had three kids ranging in age from 5 to 16. She was originally from Alabama and worked in Atlanta as a hairdresser.