Vice President Kamala Harris blamed the "consequences of Donald Trump's actions" and a restrictive abortion law in Georgia for a woman's death after a hospital's delay in performing a critical procedure.
The woman died from an infection, according to reports.
"This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school," the Democrat nominee said in a statement, reports The Hill. "This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down."
According to a report in ProPublica on Monday, the 28-year-old woman, Amber Thurman, had taken abortion pills but did not expel all of the fetal tissue, leading to an infection.
But when she showed up at an Atlanta hospital in need of a dilation and curettage, or a D&C procedure, to remove the tissue, doctors monitored her for 20 hours as her infection spread before performing the procedure.
An official state committee deemed Thurman's death as "preventable" and said the delay in performing the procedure had a "large" impact on her death.
"In more than 20 states, Trump abortion bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care," Harris said in a statement. "Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being 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."
She further argued that Trump would sign a national abortion ban. During last week's debate with Harris, he refused to commit to vetoing such legislation.
"We must pass a law to restore reproductive freedom," Harris said. "When I am President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. Lives depend on it."
Georgia's abortion law bans abortions after a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, usually at around the sixth week of pregnancy.
The law has exceptions, including to save the pregnant person's life or preserve that person's health; if the fetus is not expected to survive a pregnancy; or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, according to a report for medical professionals from The Abortion Defense Network.
The D&C procedure, however, is not considered an abortion under Georgia law and is not prohibited by its ban, the network said.
"With respect to self-managed abortion, it is legal for providers to give medical care during or after a self-managed abortion provided there is no cardiac activity, or if the patient is experiencing a complication that would qualify as a medical emergency, the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or the pregnancy is medically futile," the report added.