Atlanta – Vice President Kamala HarrisHer visit to Georgia on Friday is all about one thing: women’s reproductive rights.
Harris’ visit follows ProPublica’s investigation into two women who recently died in the state. It found that their deaths could have been prevented, but their medical care was hampered by Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. Harris highlighted the stories of Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman, the two women at the center of ProPublica’s report, and argued cases like theirs would become more severe if former President Donald Trump is re-elected.
Thurman’s family met with Harris at her Rally “Unite for America” Thursday with Oprah Winfrey in Michigan. On Friday, Harris spoke about her conversation with Thurman’s mother and sisters. She said they told her “how terribly they miss her.”
“Their pain is heartbreaking,” Harris said, adding that Thurman’s mother said she “can’t stop thinking about the word ‘preventable’ because medical experts have now determined that Amber’s death was preventable.”
According to ProPublica, Thurman, who was pregnant, took abortion pills but did not pass all of the fetal tissue from her body, a rare complication. She required a routine dilation and curettage to remove the tissue, but that procedure was now a felony in Georgia. A doctor who performed the procedure could be prosecuted and sentenced to prison. ProPublica reported that doctors watched “her infection spread, her blood pressure drop and her organs begin to fail.” By the time they operated, it was too late.
Harris also said she promised Thurman’s mother that she would make sure her daughter would not be remembered “just as a statistic.”
In Michigan, Harris reminded voters on Thursday that “Trump selected three members of the Supreme Court of the United States with the intent that they would overturn the protections of Roe v. Wade, and they did what he intended.”
The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony “Pro-Life America” accused Harris of trying to “make political capital” with these stories.
“We mourn the senseless loss of Amber, Candi and their unborn children. We agree that their deaths were preventable. But let’s be very clear: Georgia law, and any pro-life law, requires doctors to act in the exact same circumstances as theirs. If abortion advocates weren’t spreading misinformation and confusion to score political points, the outcome may have been different,” said Katie Daniel, the group’s state political director.
In Atlanta, Harris also criticized Trump’s plans to vote as a Florida citizen against a state ballot bill that would protect abortion rights and restore restrictions established by Roe v. Wade. Like Georgia, Florida has a six-week abortion ban.
“And now Donald Trump is saying he will personally vote in Florida, where he now lives, to support the extreme abortion ban there, just like the one here in Georgia,” she said.
When asked about his voting during the September debate between Harris and Trump, Trump, nine months pregnant, falsely claimed that Democratic-governed states and Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, supported abortion and argued that there was broad, bipartisan support for overturning Roe v. Wade.
“(Abortion access is) now a popular vote issue. It’s not tied to the federal government. I’ve taken great credit for that. It took courage to do that,” he said during the debate. “And the Supreme Court had great courage to do that. And I give those six justices tremendous credit.”
A Harris campaign official said the organization’s work in Georgia has focused on linking reproductive rights to the state’s black maternal mortality rate.
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates for black women. Both Thurman and Miller were black.
According to a CBS News tracker, this is Harris’ third trip to the state as a presidential candidate and her eighth this year as vice president.
Some of her travels have focused on women’s reproductive rights. Campaign representatives are currently on a “Reproductive Freedom Tour” that began in Florida and continues through swing states. During her tenure as vice president, Harris traveled to states where abortion was restricted or banned, such as Arizona, Indiana and Iowa.
In March, she became the first vice president to visit an abortion doctor when she visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota.
