A Fox News audience composed of pro-Trump supporters laughed during a Wednesday town hall that was billed as focusing on women’s issues when the disgraced ex-president cracked a tasteless joke about a pregnant Georgia woman who died as the result of being unable to get medical care after taking medication to terminate her pregnancy.
The woman, Amber Thurman, ProPublica reported in September, “suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.”
She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.
But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.
Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.
The host of the town hall was Harris Faulkner, and she told Trump as the event began, “I want to share with you Senators Warnock and Ossoff, [former] Atlanta Mayor [Keisha] Bottoms, and Amber Thurman’s family have come out on a press call. And they’re doing what’s called a prebuttal to our town hall right now.”
His voice dripping with sarcasm, Trump said, “Oh, that’s nice.”
“Yeah,” Faulkner replied.
“You’ll get better ratings, I promise,” Trump added as Faulkner grinned.
Some in the audience began applauding and laughing. Others yelled, “Woooo!”
Trump’s flippant comment and the reaction from women in the audience set off a torrent of criticism on Twitter.
