Harris ads feature Texas woman who nearly died from sepsis amid strict abortion ban

WASHINGTON —  A new series of Kamala Harris campaign ads seek to highlight increasingly perilous medical care for women since the fall of Roe vs. Wade by telling the story of a Texas woman who got a life-threatening infection when she couldn’t get proper treatment after she miscarried and how she may no longer be able to have children.

In one ad, the woman identified only as Ondrea details how excited she was to have a girl only to find out that the baby wouldn’t survive after her water broke too early. She was denied an abortion and eventually went into labor. “Immediately after her birth, I was in the worst pain of my life,” she says, as she and her husband are pictured in her living room near a framed photo of the baby’s ultrasound. She then developed sepsis, a life-threatening complication.

The ad is part of a final push by the Democratic nominee to highlight how medical care has grown increasingly unstable for pregnant women — including for those who never intended to end a pregnancy — since three justices appointed to the Supreme Court by then-President Trump helped overturn abortion rights.

Ondrea blames Trump for her situation.

“It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life,” she says in the ad.

In another ad targeted at men, Ondrea’s husband, Cesar, says: “Baby crying at night? Like, I would love to hear that every night. And now we may never ever get to be pregnant again.”

“There are rights and freedoms that we had for generations and they just got ripped away.”

Harris will campaign on reproductive healthcare Friday in Texas, a reliably Republican state that has one of the strictest bans in the nation and where women have repeatedly sued or spoken out about dangerously lacking medical care.

When Roe was first overturned, Democrats initially focused on limitations on access to abortion to end unwanted pregnancies. But the same medical procedures used for abortions are used to treat miscarriages. And increasingly in 14 states with strict abortion bans, women cannot get medical care until their condition has become life-threatening. In some states, doctors can face criminal charges if they provide medical care.

Democrats warn that the winnowing of rights will only continue if Trump is elected. Republican lawmakers in states across the U.S. have been rejecting Democrats’ efforts to protect or expand access to birth control, for example.

Democrats are hoping the issue will motivate people to turn out in the dead-heat presidential election and help send Harris to the White House.

About six in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a July poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Voters in seven states, including some conservative ones, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to restrict them in statewide votes over the last two years.

Trump has been inconsistent in his message to voters on abortion and reproductive rights, constantly shifting his stances or offering vague, contradictory and at times nonsensical answers to questions on an issue that has become a major vulnerability for Republicans in this year’s election.

In another ad that will air on CNN before Harris’ TV town hall Wednesday night, Ondrea stands in front of her bathroom mirror staring at the massive scar on her abdomen. There are photos of her in a hospital bed, her belly cut open as captions tell viewers her story. She got pregnant in 2022 but miscarried at 16 weeks when her water broke.

Ondrea is Black. Black women are more likely to suffer preterm labor, other pregnancy complications and are also far more likely to die in childbirth in the U.S., where maternal mortality rates are increasing.

The audio includes spliced clips of Trump talking about abortion.

“First of all, I am the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade,” Trump says.

A moment later, another interviewer asks: “Do you believe in punishment for abortion?”

“There has to be some punishment,” Trump responds.

As the viewer reads how Ondrea may no longer be able to have children after her ordeal, they hear Trump’s voice saying: “Women will be happy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

Long writes for the Associated Press.