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Kamala Harris slammed Donald Trump on abortion rights during a rally in Madison, Wisconsin on Friday night, bringing up the example of a Georgia woman who died of sepsis after her care was delayed.
“Women are being denied care during miscarriages, some only being treated once they develop sepsis,” Harris said.
“And we know that women have died because of Trump abortion bans. I was with a mother and the two sisters of a woman who died because of Trump abortion bans just last night,” she said about the event on Thursday night hosted by Oprah Winfrey.
Amber Thurman died at the age of 28 two years ago. She waited 20 hours for emergency medical care following complications caused by an abortion pill.
Harris said the mother, Shanette Williams, told her that “the worst thing among the pain that she’s experiencing” was that he daughter’s death was “preventable.”
“The young woman, she was a vibrant, 28-year-old young woman with a mother of a six-year-old son. Her name Amber Nicole Thurman – I promised her mother I will say her name every time,” Harris added.
The vice president went on to outline how Amber was a medical assistant who had just learned that she was accepted to nursing school.
“She had her whole future planned out,” Harris said, adding that Thurman was so proud of “finally gaining independence” after finding an apartment “in a safe community.”
“It had a little pool where her son could play, and she was so proud … and so hopeful,” Harris said.
Thurman then found out that she was pregnant, and decided to have an abortion.
“But because of the Trump abortion ban in Georgia, she was forced to travel out of state to receive the health care that she needed,” Harris said.
The 28-year-old then discovered that she needed further care after coming back to Georgia, where she went to Piedmont Henry Hospital outside Atlanta.
The vice president said that “under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed.”
She added that Thurman was forced to wait for “20 excruciating hours.”
“She waited as she deteriorated, then she reached such a critical state, that the doctors finally operated, and it was too late, and she died of sepsis,” Harris said on Friday night.
Medical experts have found that her death was preventable.
“So understand what a law like this means, these kinds of laws under Trump abortion bans, it means doctors may have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take any action,” the vice president said.
“Nobody wants that. What is he talking about?” she said of Trump, who has claimed there was a clamor for abortion access decisions to be returned to the states.
“Are we saying we’re going to craft public health policy so that doctors only kick in when you’re about to die?” Harris asked. “This is one example of what is happening around our country right now, and this is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect.”
“When Congress passes the bill to restore reproductive freedom. As President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law,” Harris concluded.
On Thursday night, Williams spoke at the event hosted by Oprah Winfrey and attended by Harris called Unite for America.
“Initially I did not want the public to know my pain,” Williams said. “I wanted to go through it in silence, but I realized that it was selfish.”
“Amber was not a statistic,” the emotional mother said on Thursday night.
“She was loved by a family, a strong family, and we would’ve done whatever to get my baby, our baby, the help that she needed,” she added.
The mother said she was “broken” and that she was going through “the worst pain ever that a mother, that a parent, could ever feel.”
