"In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat."

"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."

"It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late."

Amber's death in August 2022 has been declared the first official death from an abortion ban. But hers is far from the only one – we've all read and heard the stories of women turned away from emergency rooms bleeding from miscarriages, patients forced to carry nonviable pregnancies until they're sick enough for doctors to terminate, 13-year-olds forced to carry their rapist's baby because the closest clinic is hundreds of miles away in another state.

This is the hell women and girls are living under because of Donald Trump and Brian Fitzpatrick's abortion bans. And it's killing us.

Amber Nicole Thurman should be alive today. And she isn’t because politicians like Trump and Fitzpatrick think they know better than women and our doctors. Amber’s blood – and the trauma of every woman and girl living under an abortion ban – is on their hands.

When I joined the Army at 17, I knew I would be risking my life in combat to protect our freedoms. I never imagined I would have to protect them from politicians right here at home, too.

But when I saw Fitzpatrick vote over and over again to restrict our reproductive freedoms, I knew my mission remained the same, it was just the location that changed. I got into this race to protect our freedoms in the halls of Congress, just like I did on the battlefield.

I'm running for Amber and Amanda Zurawski and Kaitlyn Joshua and Kate Cox and a 13-year-old girl in Mississippi also named Ashley. They deserve better. And so do you, John.

Thanks for being in this fight with me as my co-pilot,

Ashley 🚁