ATLANTA — Kamala Harris criticized Donald Trump as a threat to women’s freedom and their own lives, warning in a speech in the battleground state of Georgia on Friday that Republicans will continue to strangle 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 the complications of taking abortion pills to end their pregnancies.
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 abortion in early pregnancy to save the mother’s life, critics say the law has created dangerous confusion for doctors about when they are allowed to provide care.
“Is it good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy to say that a health care provider is only going to 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.
“He had his future all planned out,” Harris said. “And it was her plan. What she wanted to do for her, for her son, for her future.
However, Thurman waited more than 20 hours to the hospital for a routine medical procedure called D&C to remove the remaining tissue after taking abortion pills. He developed sepsis and died.
“She was loved,” Harris said. “And she should be alive today.”
Harris has been outspoken on abortion rights since the Supreme Court’s decision more than two years ago, but Friday’s speech was her first focus on the issue since replacing President Joe Biden in top of the Democratic ticket.
Harris, who was in the Atlanta area Friday to address the issue, heard Thursday night from the mother and sisters of one of the women who died.
During a live campaign event hosted by Oprah Winfrey and attended by Harris, Shanette Williams, Amber Thurman’s mother, tearfully told viewers that “people around the world need to know that this was preventable” . Williams said that she initially did not want to go public about her daughter’s death in 2022, but she finally decided that it was important for people to understand that her daughter “wasn’t a statistic. She was loved.”
Harris told the family: “I’m so sorry. The courage you all have shown is extraordinary.”
Trump has repeatedly said he was proud to help overturn Roe v. He also said that he supports the exception to the ban on abortion in cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said that since Georgia has such exceptions in place, “it is not clear why the doctors did not act quickly to protect the lives of the mothers.”
Abortion advocates and doctors argued Friday that the women’s deaths raise questions about the safety of taking abortion pills at home without a doctor’s supervision. Advocates have pushed for tougher restrictions on the pills for years, most recently to the US Supreme Court in a failed attempt to limit availability.
“Women think it’s completely safe for them to go online and order these drugs,” Christina Francis, a gynecologist in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who opposes abortion, told reporters on Friday.
Since 2000, the FDA has approved a two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol as a safe way to terminate pregnancies at 10 weeks of gestation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA removed an in-person visit requirement to obtain the drugs. The complications reported were rare and surgical intervention to end the pregnancy was required in 2.6% of cases.
Dozens of pregnant patients have faced delayed care or distant states from hospitals during medical emergencies in the past two years, a violation of federal law, since Roe v. it was overturned by the US Supreme Court. Violations have 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, after the decision.
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.
“Medicine is a gray area,” he said. Laws “are a blunt instrument.”
She said Republican lawmakers now blaming hospitals and doctors are seeing the ramifications of the laws playing out in real time.
“The law prevents us from being able to provide evidence-based care without having to think about the risk of criminal prosecution,” he said.
Early voting in person It began Friday in three states — Virginia, South Dakota and Minnesota — and the Harris campaign hopes reproductive rights will be a strong motivator for Democrats.
About half of voters say abortion is one of the most important issues they consider when they vote — but it’s more important to women who are registered voters than to male voters, according to a new AP poll- NORC. About 6 women in 10 voters say that abortion policy is one of the most important issues for their vote in the next election, compared to about 4 in 10 male voters.
The gender gap doesn’t stop there.
About 6 women in 10 voters trust Harris more than Trump to handle abortion, while about 2 in 10 women trust Trump more. Half of male voters trust Harris more than Trump on abortion, while about a third trust Trump more than Harris.
Democrats point to a series of electoral victories when abortion rights have been on the ballot, and advocates believe that Harris is a strong messenger. During the September 10 presidential debate she gave a strong answer on how the bans have affected even women who never thought to end pregnancy.
Harris has a long history of reproductive health issues, particularly black maternal health. Since she topped the ticket, others have toured the nation speaking about reproductive rights, including her husband, Doug Emhoff.
___ Long and Seitz reported from Washington. AP polls editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report.