Harris puts abortion rights at the center of her campaign

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An angry Vice President Kamala Harris displayed a quick reaction mentality this week to address the central issue of abortion rights.

She called the people behind abortion bans “those hypocrites” and argued at a hastily organized campaign rally in Atlanta that some U.S. communities now addressing abortion bans had been neglected for years on the issue of maternity care. “Where have you been?” she asked.

The focus on abortion rights shifted during the week after the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica published a report on two Georgia women who died as a result of delayed medical care related to their state’s abortion ban.

On Thursday, the mother of one of the women sat in the audience at an event live-streamed from Michigan and told Harris and Oprah Winfrey the story of her daughter’s tragedy.

According to a report by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, the campaign had planned a last-minute rally in Georgia on Friday at Harris’ direction, where Harris spoke in front of signs saying that a third of all women are living under a “Trump abortion ban” – a phrase she repeated throughout the speech.

“It’s reminiscent of the kind of quickly organized trips that put Harris at the center of President Joe Biden’s re-election efforts at the time, and an example of the kind of moments her campaign is using to highlight – and amplify – issues it believes will galvanize voters and mobilize them to vote,” Alvarez wrote.

Former President Donald Trump argued he did the country a favor by appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade and return the abortion issue to state legislatures. Trump says that’s what “everyone” wanted, but polls and recent elections suggest the opposite is true.

ProPublica’s reporting and numerous previous Democratic testimony at their Chicago convention in August have brought the issue of abortion rights to the forefront, particularly in states where restrictions are in place, including swing states Georgia and North Carolina.

“I’m just so sorry,” Harris told Shanette Williams, whose 28-year-old daughter Amber Nicole Thurman died in 2022.

“And the courage that all of you have shown is extraordinary because you also just learned how she died,” Harris said during the event in Michigan. ProPublica reported that a state investigative committee, which included doctors, issued a nonpublic report that found Thurman’s death was preventable.

Thurman, a mother who planned to study nursing, found out she was expecting twins and wanted to terminate the pregnancy, according to ProPublica. She ended up taking abortion pills after driving to North Carolina, where current abortion restrictions were not yet in place. Thurman suffered a rare complication that required a hospital procedure. Doctors waited to operate because the procedure, known as a D&C (dilation and curettage), is now a felony in Georgia unless the mother’s life is in danger.

Speaking to Winfrey on Thursday, Harris argued that even abortion restrictions that allow exceptions to protect the mother are far from enough because they force doctors to determine whether the woman is “on death’s door” before providing treatment.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar interviewed Dr. Nisha Verma, an obstetrician-gynecologist practicing in Georgia, about the impact of the bans on the care of pregnant women.

“We’re dealing with really difficult situations and trying to figure out when to intervene in that continuum of care,” Verma said. “There’s no clear line where someone goes from complete health to acute death.”

“Because of this law, because of the medical emergency exception, it’s really unclear when we can intervene in each individual situation,” she said.

Verma described the treatment of a patient who had undergone artificial insemination using her last embryo and was desperate to become pregnant, but was told after about 18 weeks that the baby would not survive.

As the patient struggled with this tragic situation, Verma said doctors tried to figure out how sick she would have to become before they could help her.

“This has added to their suffering in an already terrible situation,” Verma said.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters that showed a neck-and-neck race nationally, Harris is ahead on abortion rights — 54% of likely voters trust her to do better on abortion rights, compared to 41% who trust Trump. Trump is ahead on several other key issues in the poll, such as the economy.

Harris’ strength on abortion rights rests on key groups she hopes will turn out in droves for her on Election Day. Among young people ages 18 to 29, nearly three-quarters said they trust Harris on the issue. Among black voters, 83 percent trust Harris, and among Hispanic voters, the figure was 63 percent.

Compared with likely white voters, black and Hispanic voters in the poll were more likely to say they believe Trump will try to pass a national ban on abortion. Trump himself has said he will not do so.

A majority of voters (61 percent, according to a KFF poll released this month) said they would favor a federal law restoring federal abortion rights. However, such a law is unlikely to pass the U.S. Senate, where passage of such a change would likely require a supermajority of 60 votes.

The vast majority of voters, 89%, believe this election will impact abortion rights, and 61% said it will have a “significant” impact, according to KFF.

As expected, voters are more likely to say they trust the Democratic candidate on abortion rights than the Republican, but that lead has grown since Harris took Biden’s seat, according to the KFF poll.

Abortion rights may not be a motivating issue for men, but CNN’s Arit John, Eva McKend and David Wright reported that the Harris campaign has tried to make the issue more relevant to male voters by framing abortion rights as a matter of personal freedom and presenting real-life accounts of women and their husbands affected by abortion bans during a Reproductive Freedom Movement bus tour through the key state of Pennsylvania this week.