Vice President Kamala Harris is blaming former President Donald Trump for the deaths of two women in Georgia who she says died because they were unable to access legal abortions or adequate medical care.
Campaigning in Georgia on Friday, Ms. Harris said Mr. Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, spurring GOP-lead states including Georgia to adopt abortion bans.
“This is a healthcare crisis and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis,” she said. “Let’s understand if he’s elected again as president, Donald Trump will go further. We know what we’re up against and we must speak of the stakes.”
The Harris campaign is hoping that emphasizing abortion rights can mobilize voters in Georgia, a swing state. Abortion has been a pivotal issue for Ms. Harris, who has used the bully pulpit of her campaign to condemn abortion restrictions.
Numerous polls show she has a substantial lead over Mr. Trump on who voters believe will better protect abortion rights. Her lead in Georgia is much smaller.
A poll released Thursday by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution/University of Georgia found that Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris among registered voters 47% to 44% — within the margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. Roughly 7% of voters said they are undecided, the poll found, while less than 1% are voting for third-party candidates.
Ms. Harris told the stories of the two women who died after taking abortion medicines they purchased online. Their deaths were detailed in a lengthy story published this week in ProPublica.
Ms. Harris said Georgia’s abortion ban means “doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.”
“[It] says that good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy is about saying that health care providers will only start providing that care when you’re about to die,” she said.
Amber Thurman, 28, discovered she was pregnant with twins shortly after Georgia’s six-week abortion ban went into effect. Unable to get an abortion in Georgia and late for an appointment in North Carolina, she opted to end the pregnancy by taking two pills that can end a pregnancy after 10 weeks gestation.
Thurman’s family attended a Harris rally with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday evening to tell her story.
About a week after taking the second pill, Thurman vomited blood and passed out. She died at a nearby hospital. Abortion-rights advocates contend that doctors hesitated in treating her due to the state law.
Candi Miller, a 41-year-old mother with several chronic conditions, including Lupus, experienced what doctors said were rare, treatable complications from abortion drugs. Miller’s teenage son said she was bedridden and moaning after taking the drug.
Her family told ProPublica that she did not seek care because she feared she’d face legal consequences because of Georgia’s abortion law.
However, some medical professionals are pushing back against ProPublica’s reporting.
Christina Francis, a board-certified ob-gynecologist and the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said the deaths could have been prevented, but not by Georgia’s abortion laws. She said both women could have received care because their abortion posed a threat to their bodies and that they took the abortion drugs without the supervision of a medical professional.
Because the pregnancies likely posed health risks to the mothers, they would have been able to get an abortion, Ms. Francis said.
“No physician has been prosecuted when acting under these kinds of situations. The misinformation being told about these lies are what is harming women,” she said during a conference call with reporters sponsored by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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