Kamala Harris will give remarks on Friday in the Atlanta area about Donald Trump’s role in the abortion bans that now blanket much of the United States, days after news broke that two Georgia mothers died after being unable to access legal abortions and adequate medical care.
In the weeks since becoming the Democratic nominee for president, Harris has made reproductive rights a central part of her campaign. She has toured the country to highlight the healthcare consequences of the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, which paved the way for more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions.
Harris has blamed the former president for Roe’s demise because Trump appointed three of the supreme court justices who overturned the landmark decision. Her campaign has also slammed Republicans for repeatedly blocking Senate bills that would have guaranteed a federal right to in vitro fertilization, a popular fertility treatment that had its future cast into doubt after Roe’s overturning.
The deaths of the Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, were first reported earlier this week by ProPublica and occurred as a result of Georgia enacting a six-week abortion ban. Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee looked at both women’s cases and deemed their deaths “preventable”, according to ProPublica.
Although Georgia permits abortions in medical emergencies, doctors across the country have said that abortion exceptions are worded so vaguely as to be unworkable. Instead, doctors have said, they are forced to watch until patients get sick enough to legally intervene.
After Thurman took abortion pills to end a pregnancy in 2022, her body failed to expel all of the fetal tissue – a rare but potentially devastating complication, according to ProPublica. Doctors delayed giving the 28-year-old a routine procedure for 20 hours, and she developed sepsis. Her heart stopped during an emergency surgery.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” Harris said in a statement about Thurman earlier this week. “This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down.”
Harris added: “These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
While on the campaign trail, Trump has alternated between bragging about helping to demolish Roe, complaining about how Republicans’ hardline anti-abortion stances have cost the Republican elections, and flip-flopping on his own position on the procedure.
Access to abortion has become one of voters’ top issues over the last two years, and Democrats are hoping that outrage over Roe will propel them to victory at the ballot box this November. Ten states, including the key battleground states of Nevada and Arizona, are set to hold abortion-related ballot measures, which could boost turnout among Democrats’ base.
