Why Kamala Harris is heading to Georgia to speak about reproductive rights

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris directed her team this week to immediately schedule a visit to Georgia following a media report that revealed two deaths linked to the battleground state’s abortion restrictions, according to two sources familiar with the planning – a callback to the rapid response travel she’s done over the past year.

“She made it clear that it needed to happen this week,” one source told CNN.

It’s reminiscent of the type of quickly arranged travel that placed Harris at the center of President Joe Biden’s then-reelection effort and an example of the types of moments her campaign is seizing on to elevate – and amplify – issues it believes will galvanize voters and mobilize them to vote.

“She uses her platform to command the attention of the country to these issues. This is a natural succession of that,” a senior Harris adviser told CNN.

Before she replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic president ticket, Harris had traveled the country to offer forceful pushback over contentious Republican-led state legislation or laws on a range of issues.

Last year, for example, she delivered an impassioned speech in Nashville after Tennessee Republicans expelled two Black Democratic state legislators, who had protested on the state House floor against inaction on gun control following a mass shooting in the city.

That was later followed by a trip to Florida, where she slammed Republicans over a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools.

And earlier this year, she went to Arizona, where she coined the term “Trump abortion bans” in reference to the restrictions on the procedure implemented in Republican-led states since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Harris advisers see Friday’s trip to Georgia as emblematic of that approach: rushing to the scene of issues of consequence and using her bully pulpit to put a spotlight on it; and doing so in a state that Democrats are trying to keep in play.

A Georgia mother died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays to her medical care stemming from the state’s restrictive abortion law, nonprofit news outlet ProPublica reported.

Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, discovered she was pregnant with twins shortly after Georgia’s six-week abortion ban went into effect. She tried to schedule a surgical abortion four hours away in North Carolina, but due to traffic, she was late to the appointment. Instead, she had a medication abortion – two pills approved to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks’ gestation – but developed what were ultimately fatal complications.

ProPublica also detailed another death that Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee called “preventable.” Candi Miller, a 41-year-old mother with several chronic conditions, died in 2022 after she experienced rare, treatable complications from a medication abortion. According to ProPublica, Miller’s family told a coroner she did not seek care because of laws around pregnancy and abortion. CNN has sought comment from Miller’s family.

Thurman’s family attended a Harris rally with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday evening. The family shared their story and engaged with the vice president in an emotional moment.

The Harris campaign is hoping the political saliency of reproductive rights can help galvanize voters ahead of Election Day. As the latest New York Times/Siena College poll found, the vice president continues to lead Trump when it comes to whom likely voters trust to do a better job on abortion.

Campaign officials cited the vice president’s response on abortion as one of the strongest moments of her debate with Trump last week, based on internal data that suggested her remarks about miscarriages and victims of rape and incest resonated the most with undecided voters.

Last week, the Harris campaign launched an abortion-focused ad, capitalizing on what officials said was a pivotal exchange between Harris and Trump.

And on Wednesday, the campaign released a new ad featuring Hadley Duvall, a reproductive rights advocate and rape survivor who describes becoming pregnant at age 12 after her stepfather raped her following years of sexual abuse.

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