Vice President Kamala Harris promised during an abortion-focused speech Friday in Georgia to sign a bill that would “restore reproductive freedoms” if she is elected president.
“When Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedoms, as president of the United States, I will so proudly sign it back into law,” she said. “Proudly sign it into law.”
The appearance in suburban Atlanta focused heavily on the deaths of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, both of whom died after experiencing complications from abortion pills.
“When [Thurman] discovered that she was pregnant, she decided she wanted to have an abortion, but because of the Trump abortion ban here in Georgia, she was forced to travel out of state to receive the healthcare that she needed,” Harris said. “But when she returned to Georgia, she needed additional care, so she went to a hospital.”
Thurman died after doctors did not perform a dilation and curettage procedure to clear fetal tissue from her uterus for 20 hours after her arrival, which Harris claimed was due to Georgia’s abortion laws.
“Understand what a law like this means,” Harris said. “Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.”
Whether Georgia’s law caused Thurman’s death is heavily disputed by groups such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America that agree doctors should have acted sooner but say they were not delayed by the legislation.
“No state law, including Georgia’s, prevents a hospital from treating a woman in a medical emergency,” SBA state policy director Katie Glenn Daniel posted on X, saying the tragedy highlights the dangers of abortion drugs. “It says so in the first paragraph of Georgia’s right-to-know booklet. Removing the remains of already deceased babies is not an abortion.”
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign released a statement Friday saying that he will not sign a federal abortion ban and that he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is in danger.
“President Trump also supports universal access to contraception and IVF,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. “Contrarily, Kamala Harris and the Democrats are radically out of touch with the majority of Americans in their support for abortion up until birth and forcing taxpayers to fund it.”
Harris addressed Trump’s claims to support exceptions, saying they would be difficult to enact in practice.
“Let’s break that down, shall we?” she said. “You’re saying that good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy is about saying that a healthcare provider will only start providing that care when you’re about to die.”
Harris said she was “certain” that Trump would sign a national abortion ban into law if he is elected.
“He brags about overturning Roe v. Wade,” she said. “He says he is proud. Proud that women are dying, proud that doctors and nurses could be thrown in prison for administering care, proud that young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers. How dare he?”
Harris spoke underneath a banner that read, “1 in 3 women lives under a Trump abortion ban,” and said women are being made to feel as though they are criminals.
“So 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, and we are all here standing with you,” she said. “You are not alone. You are not alone.”
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Harris has campaigned heavily on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, going on multiple nationwide abortion rights tours during the midterm elections and making the issue a central focus of her presidential campaign.
The crowd of 600 enthusiastically backed her during the speech, chanting “We’re not going back!” before she took the stage.