Facebook’s new Community Notes feature just fact-checked Hillary Clinton. The platform slapped a correction on one of her posts about abortion, calling out a misleading claim she made on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
“Three years ago today, Trump’s far-right Supreme Court majority ended Americans’ federal right to abortion,” Clinton wrote on Facebook. She continued, “Over 100 women have been denied emergency abortion care. One of them, Amber Nicole Thurman, was only 28 and left behind a son.” Clinton urged people to share Thurman’s story via a ProPublica link.
But Facebook users weren’t buying it. A Community Note attached to Clinton’s post pointed out that Thurman’s death wasn’t due to Georgia’s abortion ban. The note said she died from an infection after taking abortion pills in North Carolina.
“Amber Thurman, 28, died from infection after taking abortion pills in NC,” the note read. “Doctors delayed a needed D and C for nearly 20 hours despite Georgia law allowing emergency care.” It added that her death was ruled preventable, and her family is suing for medical malpractice.
Thurman had been pregnant with twins. After taking the abortion pill, her body didn’t expel all fetal tissue, which led to sepsis. By the time she got to a Georgia hospital, the babies had already died—and she wasn’t seeking an abortion there.
Georgia’s abortion law wasn’t the issue. It defines abortion as an act likely to kill a living fetus. Since the twins were already dead, emergency care was legal. Yet doctors waited nearly a full day to perform a life-saving procedure.
Even ProPublica, which Clinton cited, admitted uncertainty about the delay. In the 57th paragraph of their article, they wrote it’s “not clear” why doctors waited. The note also pointed to a quote from attorney Ben Crump, who represents Thurman’s family.
“Even under Georgia law, the doctors had a duty to act to save Amber,” Crump said. “There was no viable fetus or anything that would have prevented them from saving her life.”
Democrats pushed stories like Thurman’s ahead of the 2024 election, claiming women were dying due to red-state abortion laws. But many of those stories unraveled—pointing instead to hospital errors, not abortion bans.