'She should be alive today': Harris spotlights woman's death to blast abortion bans and Trump

Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event, Sept. 20, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

ATLANTA -

Kamala Harris blasted Donald Trump as a threat to women's freedoms and their very lives, warning in a speech in the battleground state of Georgia on Friday that Republicans would continue to choke off access to abortion if he returns to the White House.

The Democratic vice-president's visit came days after ProPublica reported that two women in the state died after they did not get proper medical treatment for complications from taking abortion pills to end their pregnancies.

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Such deaths, Harris said, were not only preventable but predictable because of laws that have been implemented since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Although Georgia's six-week ban allows abortions in early pregnancy to save a mother's life, critics say the law has created dangerous confusion for doctors about when they're allowed to provide care.

"Good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy is about saying a health-care provider will only start providing that care when you're about to die?" Harris asked.

Harris shared the story of Amber Thurman, a mother who decided to have an abortion when she became pregnant again.

"She had her future all planned out," Harris said. "And it was her plan. What she wanted to do for herself, for her son, for their future."

However, Thurman waited more than 20 hours at the hospital for a routine medical procedure known as a D&C to clear out remaining tissue after taking abortion pills. She developed sepsis and died.

"She was loved," Harris said. "And she should be alive today."

Harris has been outspoken on abortion rights ever since the Supreme Court's decision more than two years ago, but Friday's speech in Atlanta was her first focused squarely on the issue since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Harris heard Thursday night from Thurman's mother and sisters.

During a livestreamed campaign event hosted by Oprah Winfrey and attended by Harris, Shanette Williams, Thurman's mother, tearfully told viewers that "people around the world need to know that this was preventable." Williams said she initially did not want to go public about her daughter's 2022 death but ultimately decided it was important for people to understand her daughter "was not a statistic. She was loved."

Harris told the family: "I'm just so sorry. The courage you all have shown is extraordinary."

She spoke about Thurman at a second rally Friday, before a thunderous crowd of thousands in the swing state of Wisconsin. Speaking in the Democratic stronghold and state capital, Madison, she called the bans put in place in more than 20 states "immoral" and warned against another Trump term.

"We are not going back," Harris said.

Trump has repeatedly said he was proud to help overturn Roe v. Wade by appointing conservative justices during his term in office. He's also said he supports exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump's campaign, said that since Georgia has such exceptions in place, "it's unclear why doctors did not swiftly act to protect the lives of mothers."

Anti-abortion advocates and doctors argued Friday that the women's deaths raise questions around the safety of taking abortion pills at home without management by a doctor. Advocates have been pushing for tougher restrictions on the pills for years, most recently at the U.S. Supreme Court in a failed attempt to limit availability.

"Women think that it's completely safe for them to go online and order these drugs," Christina Francis, a Fort Wayne, Indiana, OB-GYN who opposes abortion, told reporters Friday.

Since 2000, the FDA has approved a two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol as a safe way to end pregnancies through 10 weeks gestation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA eliminated an in-person visit requirement to get the drugs. Reported complications have been rare and surgical intervention to end the pregnancy is needed in 2.6 per cent of cases.

Dozens of pregnant patients have faced delayed care or been turned away from hospitals amid medical emergencies over the last two years, a violation of federal law, since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Violations occurred in states with and without abortion bans. But an AP analysis earlier this year found an immediate spike in some states with abortion bans, including Texas, following the ruling.

Dr. Nisha Verma, an OB-GYN in Georgia, said the six-week ban has caused a "massive environment of fear and confusion and uncertainty" for the medical community.

She said Republican legislators who are now blaming hospitals and doctors are seeing the ramifications of the laws playing out in real time.

"The law is preventing us from being able to provide evidence-based care without having to think about the risk of criminal prosecution," she said.

With in-person early voting starting Friday in three states -- Virginia, South Dakota and Minnesota -- Harris' campaign is hoping that reproductive rights will be a strong motivator for Democrats. The party points to a series of electoral wins when abortion rights have been on the ballot, and advocates believe Harris is a strong messenger.

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About half of voters say abortion is one of the most important issues as they consider their votes -- but it's more important to women who are registered voters than to male voters, according to a new AP-NORC poll. About 6 in 10 women voters say abortion policy is one of the most important issues to their vote in the upcoming election, compared to about 4 in 10 male voters.

The gender gap doesn't stop there.

About 6 in 10 women voters trust Harris more than Trump to handle abortion, while about 2 in 10 women have more trust in Trump. Half of male voters trust Harris more than Trump on abortion, while about one-third trust Trump more than Harris.

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Long and Seitz reported from Washington. AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report.