Days after news broke that two Georgia mothers died after lacking access to legal abortions and proper medical care, Sen. Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak in the Atlanta area on Friday about Donald Trump’s role in the anti-abortion laws that now cover much of the United States.
Harris has made reproductive rights a central part of her campaign in the weeks since she became the Democratic presidential nominee, traveling around the country to highlight the impact on health care of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which paved the way for nearly all abortion bans in more than a dozen states.
Harris blames Roe’s demise on President Trump’s appointment of three Supreme Court justices who overturned the landmark decision, and her campaign has blasted Republicans for repeatedly blocking a Senate bill that would have guaranteed a federal right to in vitro fertilization, a popular fertility treatment whose future is in jeopardy because of Roe’s overturning.
The deaths of Georgia mothers Amber Nicole Thurman and Candy Miller, first reported by ProPublica earlier this week, occurred after the state enacted a six-week abortion ban. According to ProPublica, the Georgia Maternal Mortality Review Board reviewed both women’s cases and determined their deaths were “preventable.”
Georgia allows abortions in medical emergencies, but doctors across the country say the abortion exceptions are too vague to be practical, and that they would rather just wait until patients are sick enough to legally intervene.
Thurman took the abortion pill to end her pregnancy in 2022, but failed to expel all of the fetal tissue, a rare but potentially devastating complication, according to ProPublica. Doctors delayed a routine operation on the 28-year-old Thurman for 20 hours after she developed sepsis. Her heart stopped during emergency surgery.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dreams of attending nursing school,” Harris said in a statement about Thurman earlier this week. “This is exactly what we feared when Roe was overturned.”
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“These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions,” Harris added.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly changed his position on abortion, bragging about helping to overturn Roe and complaining that the Republican Party’s hardline anti-abortion stance had hurt them in elections.
Abortion access has been one of the biggest issues for voters over the past two years, and Democrats are hoping anger over Roe will translate into gains at the polls in November. Ten states, including the key battleground states of Nevada and Arizona, are set to hold abortion-related ballots that could boost turnout among Democratic voters.
