Harris advocates for victims following abortion overturn

During her campaign run, Vice President Kamala Harris made it known that if she gets elected as the next president, she will immediately turn her attention to codifying Roe v. Wade and making sure women across the nation have proper and safe access to reproductive care regardless of state laws. With the recent news of two women succumbing to the effects of abortion pills, Harris has the opportunity to gain major support for her campaign.
Georgia’s healthcare system and lawmakers are catching heat right now as the community and Harris hold them and Trump responsible for the recent passing of two Black women because of the abortion ban. Candi Miller and Amber Thurman, both Black women and mothers to young children, died after they were unable to access care for rare but typically treatable complications caused by medication abortion.
Miller was a mother of three and unintentionally got pregnant in the fall of 2022. With the current ban on abortions and abortion pills, Miller had to find an alternative to deal with her situation. Miller ordered abortion pills online, and needed a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. This procedure is called D&C and, at the current moment, is banned and considered a felony if performed in Georgia. On Nov. 3, Miller was found by her teenage son and husband unresponsive next to their 3-year-old daughter. An autopsy included 10 doctors, and the results concluded that the cause of death was an incomplete abortion and marked preventable by the medical examiners.
Shortly after taking them, she went to the hospital, where she went through the pains of an abortion/miscarriage for over 20 hours in an Atl hospital. Doctors were able to perform the D&C procedure to treat sepsis that resulted from an incomplete abortion. It was too late. “This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” Harris said of Thurman on Sept. 17. “This is what we feared when Roe was struck down.”
“Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.” Harris said. She wants to restore Roe v. Wade protections if elected president, an unlikely feat that would require a federal law passed with bipartisan support from Congress.
Thurman’s case is under review with the state’s maternal mortality commission. The suburban Atlanta hospital that reportedly delayed her treatment has not been cited by the federal government for failing to provide stabilizing treatment to a pregnant patient anytime within the last two years, according to an AP review article.