CNN
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Vice President Kamala Harris this week instructed her team to immediately plan a visit to Georgia after media reports of two deaths linked to abortion restrictions in the swing state, according to two sources familiar with the planning – a nod to the trips she has made in the past year in emergency relief efforts.
“She made it clear that it had to happen this week,” a source told CNN.
It’s reminiscent of the kind of quickly organized trips that put Harris at the center of President Joe Biden’s re-election effort, and an example of the kind of moments her campaign is using to highlight – and amplify – issues it believes can mobilize voters and get them to vote.
“She’s using her platform to bring these issues to the attention of the country. This is a natural progression,” a senior Harris adviser told CNN.
Before replacing Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris had traveled the country to vigorously oppose controversial Republican-led state-level legislation on a range of issues.
Last year, for example, she gave an impassioned speech in Nashville after Tennessee Republicans expelled two black Democratic representatives from the House of Representatives. They had protested inaction on gun control in the House of Representatives following the mass shooting in the city.
She later traveled to Florida, where she sharply criticized Republicans for proposing new standards for teaching black history in the state’s public schools.
And earlier this year, she traveled to Arizona, where she coined the term “Trump abortion bans” – a reference to the restrictions on the procedure that have been put in place in Republican-led states since the Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned.
Harris’ advisers see Friday’s trip to Georgia as emblematic of that approach: rushing to the scene of important events and using her position of power to put them in the spotlight – and in a state that Democrats want to keep in play.
A Georgia mother died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays in her medical care as a result of the state’s restrictive abortion law, nonprofit news portal ProPublica reported.
Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, discovered she was expecting twins shortly after Georgia’s six-week abortion ban went into effect. She tried to schedule a surgical abortion four hours away in North Carolina, but was late for the appointment because of traffic. Instead, she had a medication abortion – two pills approved for abortion up to 10 weeks of pregnancy – but complications ultimately led to death.
ProPublica also reported on another death that Georgia’s Maternal Mortality Review Panel called “preventable.” Candi Miller, a 41-year-old mother with multiple chronic illnesses, died in 2022 after suffering rare, treatable complications following a medication abortion. According to ProPublica, Miller’s family told a medical examiner that she did not seek treatment because of pregnancy and abortion laws. CNN has reached out to Miller’s family for comment.
Thurman’s family attended a Harris rally with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night. The family shared their story and chatted with the vice president in an emotional moment.
The Harris team hopes that the political importance of the reproductive rights issue can help mobilize voters ahead of Election Day. The vice president continues to lead Trump when it comes to who voters trust to do a better job on abortion, according to the latest New York Times-Siena College poll.
Campaign officials called the vice president’s response on abortion one of the strongest moments of her debate with Trump last week, citing internal data that showed her comments on miscarriages and victims of rape and incest resonated most with undecided voters.
Last week, the Harris team launched a commercial on the issue of abortion, capitalizing on what officials said was a crucial exchange between Harris and Trump.
And on Wednesday, the campaign released a new ad featuring Hadley Duvall, a reproductive rights activist and rape survivor, who describes how she became pregnant at age 12 after her stepfather raped her following years of sexual abuse.
