Harris campaign brings reproductive rights bus tour to Savannah, highlighting local women's stories

Caption

Savannah resident Callie Beale speaks at an abortion rights rally in Savannah held by the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 5, 2024.

Credit: Benjamin Payne / GPB News

UPDATED 9/10/24

Campaign surrogates for Vice President Kamala Harris stopped in Savannah on Thursday as part of a multi-state bus tour focusing on the issue of abortion rights.

State and local elected officials were joined by two Savannah women who shared their personal experiences with reproductive health care.

Savannah resident Callie Beale said that when she was pregnant with twins, Georgia's six-week abortion ban effectively forced her to seek a medically necessary procedure out-of-state, causing a delay that threatened her life and the life of a healthy fetus.

Beale said that when an ultrasound indicated that one of the twins she was carrying had a severe chromosomal anomaly “incompatible with life,” her doctor told her that she needed a procedure known as a selective reduction to abort the unhealthy fetus, but that it was illegal to perform in Georgia.

She traveled to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City for the procedure, but the earliest appointment was four weeks later. Because of her delay in treatment, Beale had complications that eventually led to an unexpected delayed interval delivery of her son's body, while her daughter continued to gestate.

Beale's own white blood count and lactate levels “skyrocketed, trending towards sepsis — a very serious and oftentimes fatal condition,” she said.

“It was at this time that the doctors told me that they could then abort my healthy daughter so that I wouldn't die after all that I had been through,” Beale said. After 10 emergency room visits in 10 weeks, she later gave birth in Savannah to her daughter Kit, who Beale brought to the rally and said is happy and healthy.

“I come before you today to tell you that I am going to fight like hell to raise awareness that this is actually happening in the state of Georgia,” Beale said. “Once I started speaking out about this, I've had so many people that I love and respect tell me similar stories — stories that they are having to keep private out of fear of condemnation and judgment, or sometimes legal repercussions, depending on geography.”

She urged Georgians to vote for Harris, who has made abortion rights a key pillar of her campaign and who has dubbed state abortion bans including Georgia's as “Trump abortion bans,” owing to his appointment of three U.S. Supreme Court justices who helped form the conservative supermajority that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Savannah pastor Candace Hardnett also spoke at the rally, saying that she used to identify as a “pro-life conservative,” but that her views have since changed.

She and her wife sought fertility treatment in order to have a child, and now worries that the health care options available to them will be made illegal or otherwise inaccessible under a second Trump administration.

“They will continue to undermine and eliminate our fundamental rights to make our own decisions about our bodies and our futures,” said Hardnett, referring to Republicans and conservative policymakers following the Project 2025 agenda, which was written by the Heritage Foundation and several former Trump administration officials. “Clearly, they think that it's their place to dictate if, when and how we grow our families. And, frankly, I don't trust them with that decision.”

She urged Georgians to vote for Harris and her vice presidential running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz because “they believe women and their doctors should be making their own reproductive health decisions — not the U.S. government.”

Other speakers included Georgia state Rep. Anne Allen Westbrook of Savannah and Georgia Democratic Party Chair and U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams of Atlanta.

The event came one week after Harris held a campaign rally in Savannah. Harris previously visited in February to discuss abortion rights.

Savannah was the first Georgia stop of the bus tour, with additional stops scheduled for Macon and Atlanta. The tour began in Florida, where Trump resides. The former president said that he plans to vote in November against a Florida referendum that seeks to enshrine abortion access into that state's constitution.

A public opinion poll conducted by the University of Georgia in 2022 found that 61.6% of likely voters in that year's midterm election opposed the state's six-week abortion ban.