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topicnews · September 21, 2024

Harris criticizes Trump in Georgia over abortion law and death of Amber Thurman

Harris criticizes Trump in Georgia over abortion law and death of Amber Thurman

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ATLANTA – Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris brought her campaign to restore abortion rights to Georgia on Friday after reports emerged that a 28-year-old pregnant woman had died in the state as doctors struggled with new restrictions on abortion.

Georgia, which President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, is a key swing state that could decide the 2024 election. Harris currently trails former President Donald Trump in most Georgia polls, including an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll this week that found Trump ahead among likely voters in Georgia, 47% to 44%.

Harris, speaking at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, said Amber Thurman’s death two years ago was a prime example of the dangerous implications of the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturn of the Roe v. Wade decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion.

“We’re going to say her name – Amber Nicole Thurman,” Harris, the vice president, told a crowd of about 600 supporters, recounting how Thurman hoped to attend nursing school. “She had her future completely planned out, and it was her plan.”

The crowd chanted her name in unison: “Amber Nicole Thurman.”

ProPublica reported this week that Thurman was admitted to a Georgia hospital in 2022, where she underwent a routine procedure to remove fetal tissue from her uterus because she had complications from taking abortion pills. But doctors were reluctant to treat her out of deference to the state’s new abortion law, which banned the procedure with few exceptions.

“Amber waited 20 hours – 20 agonizing hours – until she was physically unwell enough that her doctors felt they could treat her. But it was too late. She died of sepsis,” Harris said.

Harris has aggressively blamed Trump, the Republican nominee, for the failure of Roe v. Wade during his three appointments to the Supreme Court. Harris said the court’s decision opened the door for 20 states to enact so-called “Trump abortion bans.”

During a livestreamed rally hosted by Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night, Harris heard from Shanette Williams, Thurman’s mother, who told Harris her daughter’s death was “preventable.”

“I promised her, as she asked, that we would make sure Amber is not just remembered as a statistic,” Harris said. “So that people know that she was a mother, a daughter and a sister, that she was loved and that she should be alive today.”

Harris said “we knew this could happen” when the court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“There’s the word preventable, and there’s another word, predictable,” Harris said. “And the reality is that for every story we hear about the suffering under Trump’s abortion bans, there are so many other stories we don’t hear about suffering that happens every day in our country.”

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

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