ATLANTA \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris blasted former president Donald Trump in a passionate speech about reproductive health during an event Friday in Georgia, blaming him for the deaths of women who did not receive proper medical treatment because of strict abortion bans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a health-care crisis. And Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis,\u201d Harris said during her most comprehensive speech on abortion since starting her presidential campaign two months ago. \u201cHe brags about overturning Roe v. Wade \u2014 in his own words, quote, \u2018I did it and I\u2019m proud to have done it.\u2019 He says he is proud. Proud that women are dying, proud that doctors and nurses could be thrown in prison for administering care and proud that young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?\u201d<\/p>\n
The event was not originally on Harris\u2019s schedule this week, but aides added a Georgia stop after a searing report by ProPublica documenting how a young mother died after waiting 20 hours for medical treatment at a hospital near Atlanta. State officials deemed the death of the 28-year-old woman, Amber Thurman, as \u201cpreventable,\u201d and ProPublica\u2019s report showcased how her inability to get abortion care in Georgia ultimately led to her death.<\/p>\n
Speaking to a crowd of a few hundred people made up largely of women, Harris delivered a broad and damning onslaught against Trump and his Republican allies, criticizing them over in vitro fertilization, contraception and a failure to protect maternal health.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese hypocrites want to start talking about this is in the best interest of women and children,\u201d she said. \u201cWell, where you been? Where you been when it comes to taking care of the women and children of America? Where you been? How dare they? How dare they?\u201d<\/p>\n
Thurman\u2019s story has resonated with Harris, who has made reproductive rights one of her main points of focus in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. During her remarks, Harris described Thurman as a \u201cvibrant\u201d mother whose death was not only preventable but also \u201cpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talking about Thurman\u2019s life plans being cut short, Harris said, \u201cWe will speak her name: Amber Nicole Thurman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmber Nicole Thurman,\u201d the crowd repeated.<\/p>\n
Harris said that there were \u201cmany other stories we\u2019re not hearing\u201d about other women \u201csuffering\u201d under restrictive laws. ProPublica this week revealed the case of another Black woman whose death was linked to Georgia\u2019s abortion restrictions.<\/p>\n
The issue of abortion has been a salient one for Democrats, and Harris is aiming to build on the momentum her party has built, chiefly by blaming Trump for the fallout from the Supreme Court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
Over the past two years, every ballot measure that has sought to preserve or expand abortion access has been successful, while those that have sought to restrict abortion access have failed \u2014 even in states that skew conservative.<\/p>\n
Some Democrats had feared that the power of the issue could wane in the 2024 presidential race \u2014 as the court decision fades into the past and as Trump attempts to moderate his position by expressing opposition to a national abortion ban. But Harris is seeking to keep abortion top of mind for voters by highlighting the ongoing impact of bans in states such as Georgia.<\/p>\n
She often refers to \u201cTrump abortion bans\u201d and points out that a large percentage of women live in states where most abortions have been deemed illegal. She has regularly asserted that Trump would take steps as president to further restrict access to reproductive care, claiming that the former president\u2019s allies have plans to limit abortions via executive action and to monitor women\u2019s pregnancies. While some of the claims do not reflect Trump\u2019s stated policy positions, Harris\u2019s campaign has sought to focus voters\u2019 attention on the real-world impact of actions the former president has already taken.<\/p>\n
Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices during his term, and has boasted that their decision to vote to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion was a great accomplishment. Harris has repeatedly sought to make him pay for it.<\/p>\n
During an online event with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday in Michigan, Harris heard the tearful testimony of family members of Thurman, who said they were still pained and angry over her 2022 death.<\/p>\n
Thurman had traveled to North Carolina to seek an abortion in 2022 after Georgia\u2019s ban went into effect, but got stuck in traffic and was unable to make her appointment. She faced rare complications after taking abortion pills and ended up at the hospital. Doctors failed to provide a routine treatment known as a D&C to remove remaining tissue, and she eventually developed sepsis and died.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re looking at a mother that is broken,\u201d said Shanette Williams, Thurman\u2019s mother, adding that she wanted the world to know that her daughter\u2019s death was preventable. Thurman\u2019s two sisters also expressed their grief during the event, prompting Harris to blast Trump for their predicament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about what we\u2019re doing in terms of saying that certain people who are in these state houses, and then, starting with the former president of the United States, think they\u2019re in a better position than a doctor or a nurse to determine when their patient needs medical care,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has defended the state\u2019s abortion law, which limits the procedure after six weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemocrats and their allies in the left wing media continue to spread falsehoods and misinformation about Georgia\u2019s LIFE Act,\u201d he wrote Wednesday on X, linking to an opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that argued the legislation did not cause Thurman\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
But in Cobb County, Ga., where Harris\u2019s event took place, several of the people in attendance Friday said they were determined to vote in part because of the state\u2019s abortion restrictions.<\/p>\n
Shannon Stevenson, a professor of nursing at Emory University, was at the event in part to hear about the issue of maternal mortality.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at Black and Brown women here in the state of Georgia, they\u2019re two to three times more likely to be affected by maternal mortality than someone who looks like me and that\u2019s not right,\u201d said Stevenson, who is White. \u201cThere are reasons for that. I hope that a Harris-Walz administration would focus on the voices of the people who are being impacted the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
Georgia state Sen. Sonya Halpern (D), who was in attendance, said she was heartbroken for Thurman\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should not be putting doctors in a position where they are trying to juxtapose their own and their duty to provide care,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd the legal line is very unclear here in Georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Friday, Harris highlighted the fact that Trump said last month that he would vote against a ballot initiative that would make abortion legal in Florida until fetal viability. Florida and Georgia have similar abortion bans.<\/p>\n
For his part, Trump has suggested that abortion probably will not be a major issue in the election, arguing falsely that everyone was happy with the Supreme Court\u2019s decision and satisfied that the matter is now being handled at the state level.<\/p>\n
He has suggested that he supports exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk. He has also blasted Democrats by saying they support late-term abortions and has pressed Harris to say whether she supports any limitations on the procedure.<\/p>\n
On Friday, she made a direct appeal to women, pledging to defend them from \u201coutrageous\u201d judgment from politicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo to those women, to those families, I say on behalf of what I believe, we all say we see you and you are not alone,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we are all here standing with you, standing with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
ATLANTA \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris blasted former president Donald Trump in a passionate speech about reproductive health during an event Friday in Georgia, blaming him for the deaths of women who did not receive proper medical treatment because of strict abortion bans. \u201cThis is a health-care crisis. And Donald Trump is the architect of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}