Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has been running this 60-second ad on television stations in Georgia this month, and has spent $348,367 on it since it first aired on Oct. 16, according to AdImpact.
Here’s a look at the ad, its accuracy and its major takeaway.
On the Screen
The advertisement opens with the heart-shaped headstone of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old woman from Georgia who died of sepsis in 2022 after delayed medical care to treat a medication abortion. It then cuts to her mother, Shanette Williams, bending over her daughter’s grave, shaking her head as if still in disbelief.
The ad then flashes to Ms. Williams and two of Ms. Thurman’s sisters sitting on a couch as they narrate the family’s grief, with her mother emotional and speaking haltingly. Pictures of Ms. Thurman smiling with her son appear, as do clips of news reports with a word commonly used to describe her death: preventable.
As Ms. Williams emphatically asserts that her daughter was “gone because of what Donald Trump did,” the advertisement cuts to a clip of the former president boasting at a town-hall event that he was “proud” to have helped overturn Roe v. Wade after his party had tried and failed for decades.
Ms. Williams declares her endorsement of Ms. Harris, and the advertisement shows images of Ms. Harris sitting with the family backstage at a town hall hosted by Oprah Winfrey, holding what appears to be Ms. Thurman’s obituary. Another image shows Ms. Harris clutching Ms. Williams’s hands.
Next comes a clip of Ms. Harris leading a crowd at a campaign event in saying Ms. Thurman’s full name, and then another image of Ms. Harris and Ms. Williams hugging.
One of the last images shows Ms. Thurman’s family standing together, touching the top of her headstone.
The Script
shanette williams
“My daughter Amber made me so proud.”
amber thurman’s Sister
“She was having complications.”
williams
“And …”
television news anchor
“Tonight we are learning more about the death of Amber Thurman …”
reporter
“The death of Amber Thurman was likely preventable if she’d had access to abortion care in her home state of Georgia.”
williams
“What happened to her was preventable. My daughter is gone because of what Donald Trump did.”
Trump
“For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated. And I did it. And I’m proud to have done it.”
Sister
“It’s nothing good enough to bring her back. Her life is over.”
williams
“I’ve never been a political person. Never. I’m voting for Kamala Harris because she showed me she really cared. I felt her sincerity and I felt her strength.”
Harris
“We will speak her name …”
harris and crowd
“… Amber Nicole Thurman.”
williams
“I felt her compassion. We will never get Amber back, but we can make sure this never happens again.”
Accuracy
The ad is broadly accurate, according to reporting by ProPublica detailing the circumstances of Ms. Thurman’s death.
It does skip over a few steps in drawing a direct line between her fatal medical complications and Mr. Trump, who appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
It was Republican lawmakers in Georgia, not Mr. Trump, who passed the abortion restrictions that led to a delay in care for Ms. Thurman, according to ProPublica.
But the state’s abortion ban, like those in many other Republican-controlled states, was made possible by Mr. Trump’s appointment of conservative justices to the Supreme Court and its subsequent overturning of Roe in June 2022.
The Takeaway
As Ms. Harris tries to draw stark contrasts between herself and Mr. Trump in the final stretch of the campaign, the ad posits a life-or-death choice for women and their families in November.
Since the fall of Roe, Ms. Harris been a forceful messenger on the ruling’s far-reaching implications, and a vocal critic of what she often calls “Trump abortion bans” that followed in states across the country.
When Mr. Trump was running against President Biden this cycle, he had largely remained silent on abortion rights. But after Ms. Harris became the Democratic nominee, he tried to soften his stance on the issue and distance himself from the fallout of the Supreme Court decision.
The Harris campaign’s ad — by putting a face, a name and a gravesite on the consequences of the end of federal abortion rights — tries to make it harder for Mr. Trump to create that space.
The post Harris Ties Trump to the Fatal Fallout of Abortion Bans appeared first on New York Times.
