The family of a Georgia woman who died after allegedly being denied an emergency abortion for 20 hours is planning to sue the hospital, their lawyer announced Tuesday.

High-profile civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump held a news conference accusing doctors at Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Georgia, of not acting quickly enough to save Amber Thurman’s life in 2022.

According to Thurman’s family and a report last month by ProPublica, Thurman — a 28-year-old mother of one — was experiencing a rare complication from abortion pills that did not expel all of the fetal tissue from her body. She visited a hospital in need of a routine procedure called a dilation and curettage, or D&C, but doctors allegedly waited nearly a full day before operating. Thurman died in surgery.

In the hours in between, Thurman’s infection spread, her blood pressure fell, and her organs began to fail, according to ProPublica. Her family said she suffered, vomited and turned blue prior to the surgery. 

A state panel that reviews pregnancy-related deaths deemed Thurman’s death preventable and said the hospital’s delay in performing the procedure had a large impact on her death, ProPublica reported.

Her case became the first known abortion-related death since the Supreme Court reversed the national right to abortion more than two years ago. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has cited Thurman's case in attacking Republicans for seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade and pass state abortion bans.

Georgia banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy except in cases involving medical emergencies, pregnancies in which the unborn child is not expected to survive, rape or incest. A judge on Monday struck down the ban, ruling it violates the state’s Constitution, although the case is likely to end up before the state Supreme Court.

Abortion-rights advocates have argued that such bans are often vague and doctors are reluctant to perform emergency abortions out of fear of being prosecuted.

But Crump blamed doctors, not the law, for Thurman’s death.

“Even under Georgia law, the doctors had a duty to act to save Amber,” he said. “She had taken the abortion pills and there were tissues left. There was no viable fetus or anything that would have prevented them from saving her life while she suffered.

“You have a duty to stabilize her and then give her the option to go to another hospital facility,” Crump said. “But you cannot let her suffer and die on your hospital bed when the death is preventable.”

Piedmont Healthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Spectrum News.

Thurman’s family said doctors kept them in the dark about her condition as they waited at the hospital. Her mother, Shanette Williams, said she would have sought medical care elsewhere if she had known doctors were waiting to perform a D&C.

“We would have done anything had we known, but we didn’t,” Williams said. “We didn't have the opportunity to know.

“It is so disheartening. It is heartbreaking. It is upsetting,” she added. “Every emotion that you could think that a mother would have, I had.”

Thurman had a son who was 6 years old when she died.

“My little nephew [is] asking, ‘Why did they take my best friend?’” said Thurman’s sister CJ Williams. “ … Basically traumatized because his mom, his best friend, someone who he was with every single day is gone.”

Crump also called for a law to be named after Thurman that would prevent similar deaths, as well as a congressional hearing into Thurman’s case.

Monday’s court ruling was of little consolation to Thurman’s family, with Crump saying one relative commented to him that “it’s like getting a death row pardon two years too late.”

Added her sister: “I would hate for this to happen to another mother, daughter, cousin, but Amber is gone. Did she really have to be the sacrifice?”