I keep finding myself saying this, but Nicole Shanahan is really growing on me. I’ll add in the cautionary parenthetical here — no, we don’t agree on everything, including some key issues, like, for instance, abortion. But I’m not convinced she won’t come around on that, given her passion for children’s health. I was in my thirties when I left the pro-choice camp for pro-life. People’s hearts and minds can be changed.
At minimum, Shanahan has shown herself to be sharp and shrewd, with a solid social media game. Some of the ads her team has released since her running mate, Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support behind former President Donald Trump have been excellent.
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Shanahan continued to show her mettle on Tuesday as she challenged Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) over her claims in a tweet on X that women suffering miscarriages were unable to obtain adequate medical care due to the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision in 2022.
What state is denying miscarriage D&C surgery? Why are so many women having deadly miscarriages? This is a massive assertion from a U.S. senator and Hillary Clinton just called for criminal charges against misinformation purveyors. Let’s make sure you are careful with your…
— Nicole Shanahan (@NicoleShanahan) September 17, 2024
Warren’s tweet asserts:
We’re in a world where doctors have to tell women in the middle of a miscarriage they can’t get the medical care they need because they’re not near enough to death, and that they need to hemorrhage in the parking lot for a few more hours.
Donald Trump’s Supreme Court did this.
In response, Shanahan asked:
What state is denying miscarriage D&C surgery? Why are so many women having deadly miscarriages? This is a massive assertion from a U.S. senator and Hillary Clinton just called for criminal charges against misinformation purveyors. Let’s make sure you are careful with your information Ms. Warren.
As Shanahan alludes, Hillary Clinton was just on MSNBC Monday night, seemingly advocating for criminal charges for Americans who “engage in propaganda.”
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Warren appears to be referring to the case of Amber Nicole Thurman, whose story is widely being circulated by abortion advocates as an example of how abortion bans are killing women. Jennifer Oliver O’Connell shares more about the case in her article detailing Vice President Kamala Harris’ “conversation” with the National Association of Black Journalists Tuesday afternoon.
Harris brought in a tragic death story that recently happened in Georgia, a state that has a heartbeat law. The woman bought mifepristone in North Carolina, ingested the drug, and then when she returned to Georgia she started having complications resulting from the abortion pill. The woman was hospitalized and was scheduled to receive a D&C to remove the fetal body parts that had been left behind, but she died from infection before the procedure could be performed. But Harris is riding her reproductive rights train, conveniently claiming it was because of the abortion bans in Georgia that this poor woman did not receive access to proper “reproductive care.”
In the accounts blaming Thurman’s death on Trump and the Supreme Court (and, more specifically, Georgia’s heartbeat law), there don’t appear to be specifics from the hospital or medical care providers as to why the D&C procedure was delayed — particularly given the circumstances of Thurman’s case. It certainly would be helpful to know more of those details before assigning blame for her death to Georgia’s law (or Trump or Republicans).
Given that even the states with the most restrictive abortion laws have “life of the mother” exceptions, the broad-brush account of what happened doesn’t really seem to square. But that isn’t stopping Harris, Warren, and other Democrats from definitively (and conveniently) placing the blame squarely at the feet of their political opponents.
So, like Shanahan, I’d like Warren to specify: What states are denying miscarriage D&C surgery? And where are women hemorrhaging in parking lots? And in what way is that connected to restrictions on abortion? Specifically.
And if Warren doesn’t have the specifics, then perhaps she should reconsider spouting her propaganda. I’m sure she wouldn’t want Kamala Harris — or, Heaven forfend, Donald Trump — to take Hillary Clinton’s advice and sic the law on her for being a purveyor of misinformation.
