Vice President Kamala Harris cited a debunked report Friday to blame former President Donald Trump for the death of a Georgia woman following a medically induced abortion — despite experts saying doctor error was to blame rather than Peach State restrictions on the procedure.
Harris, 59, spoke at length during an Atlanta rally about the August 2022 death of Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, who suffered a fatal infection after taking abortion pills that did not expel all the fetal tissue from her body.
Left-wing outlet ProPublica published a story detailing Thurman’s case on Monday — headlined “Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable” — triggering outrage among the left.
The Democratic presidential nominee claimed repeatedly Friday that Thurman had died because of Georgia’s so-called “heartbeat law,” which went into effect after the Supreme Court — including three justices nominated by Trump — voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
“You see, under the Trump abortion ban, [Thurman’s] doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed,” said Harris, who at one point led the crowd in repeating Thurman’s name.
“Understand what a law like this means: Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.”
But others have pointed out that under the Georgia law, doctors were not forbidden from operating on Thurman to remove the tissue.
The law prohibits elective abortions on children who have a “detectable human heartbeat” and allows the procedure if the doctor determines the mother’s life is at risk or if the fetus is deemed unviable due to a serious medical condition.
“The definition of abortion … clearly states that the act is taken to ’cause the death of an unborn child,’” attorney Katie Daniel, state policy director at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told reporters on a press call Friday.
“So treating abortion complications after the child or children is deceased, or managing a natural miscarriage, would not be considered an abortion under Georgia law.”
Christina Francis, an OB/GYN and CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), argued that Thurman was a victim “of high risk abortion drugs.”
In 2021, under the Harris-Biden administration, the Food and Drug Administration lifted the requirement that abortion medication be obtained in person from certified providers, allowing the drugs to be mailed.
“These preventable deaths should be a wake-up call for all Americans about the inherent dangers of abortion and how Biden-Harris policies that allow abortion drugs to be sent through the mail hurt women and their children,” Daniel said.
“In the few cases [in Georgia] where women has been turned away, the blame should be squarely on the person or institution that did it, probably in violation of state or federal law, not on the laws enacted to prevent the elected killing of unborn children.”
ProPublica noted in its report that a state maternal mortality review committee had determined Thurman’s death was “preventable,” but also noted that the doctors’ delay in providing care had a “large” impact.
Harris has been using abortion rights as one of her key arguments for why voters should choose her over Trump in what is shaping up to be the closest election in decades..
“This is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis. He brags about overturning Roe v Wade in his own words,” the VP said Friday.
“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 has promised that if Congress were to pass a bill codifying Roe v. Wade, she would “proudly” sign it into law.
The right to abortion is one of the “freedoms” Harris is pushing in her campaign, and she returned to that theme Friday.
“It is a fight for the future, and it is a fight for freedom, for freedom,” she said, “and we know in America, freedom is not to be given. It is not to be bestowed. It is ours by right. It is ours by right, and that includes the fundamental freedom of a woman to be able to make decisions about her own body and not have her government telling her what to do.”
She has claimed Trump would reinstate a national abortion ban if he came into office, something that the former president has repeatedly refuted by saying the matter should be left to each of the 50 states.
Harris repeated the false claim about Thurman’s death during a rally in Madison, Wis., later in the evening.
