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

High-profile civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump held a press 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 from ProPublica last month, Thurman — a 28-year-old mother of one — experienced a rare complication from abortion pills that did not expel all fetal tissue from her body. She visited a hospital that required a routine procedure called dilation and curettage, or D&C, but doctors would have waited almost a full day before operating. Thurman died during surgery.

In the intervening hours, Thurman’s infection spread, her blood pressure dropped 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 major impact on her death, ProPublica reported.

Her case became the first known abortion-related death since the Supreme Court struck down the nation’s right to abortion more than two years ago. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has cited Thurman’s case in attacking Republicans for trying to overturn Roe v. Wade and pass state abortion bans.

Georgia banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of medical emergencies, pregnancies where the unborn child is not expected to survive, rape or incest. A judge lifted the ban Monday, ruling that it violates the state constitution, though the case will likely end up before the state Supreme Court.

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

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

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

“You have an obligation to stabilize her and then give her the opportunity to go to another hospital,” Crump said. “But you can’t let her suffer and die on your hospital bed if 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 while 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 if we had known, but we didn’t,” Williams said. “We didn’t have the chance to know.

“It’s so discouraging. It’s heartbreaking. It is disturbing,” she added. “Every emotion you could imagine a mother would have, I had too.”

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

“My little nephew asks, ‘Why did they take my best friend?’” said Thurman’s sister CJ Williams. “…Basically traumatized because his mother, his best friend, someone he was with every day, is no longer there.”

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

Monday’s court ruling provided little comfort to Thurman’s family, with Crump saying a family member told him that “it’s like getting a death row pardon two years too late.”

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