WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is at the center of Democrats’ renewed push for abortion rights in this year’s elections and she will mark the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling in Wisconsin on Monday.
It will be the first in a series of events hosted by Harris, and it comes one day before she joins President Joe Biden at another campaign event focused on abortion in Virginia. It is expected that first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will also be present.
In her speech in Wisconsin, Harris aims to take aim at former President Donald Trump for saying he is “proud” to have helped overturn Roe v. Wade, which he made possible by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court during his term. to appoint.
“Proud that women are suffering across our country?,” Harris will say, according to excerpts released by her office. “Proud that women have been deprived of a fundamental freedom? That doctors can be thrown in jail for caring for patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”
Back in Washington, Biden will convene a meeting of his task force on reproductive health care access on Monday to discuss threats to emergency rooms and new steps for implementing executive orders on the topic.
The Democratic president said in a statement that “tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans,” and that “because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk.”
The government plans to announce new steps to strengthen access to contraception and file complaints under a law aimed at guaranteeing access to emergency health care. The law is the subject of a new legal battle that will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will consider whether abortion is required in situations where a woman’s health is at risk.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris stand with the vast majority of Americans who believe that the right to choose should be fundamental, and that health care decisions should be made by a woman with the help of her doctor – and not by politicians,” according to the White House gender policy. consultant Jen Klein said in previewing the effort. “We have demonstrated that commitment and will continue to do so by taking decisive action to protect access to reproductive health care.”
Although the loss of Roe v. Wade was a historic defeat for Democrats, the party successfully leveraged anger over the decision in the 2022 midterm elections, and they hope to do the same this year as Biden runs for second term.
The White House has repeatedly turned to Harris, the first woman to serve as vice president, to make her case.
“You don’t have to give up your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government shouldn’t tell her what to do with her body,” she recently said on ABC’s “The View.” “If she wants, she will talk to her priest, her pastor, her rabbi, her imam. But it should not be the government telling her what to do.”
Harris also suggested that too many people took Roe v. Wade for granted before it was overturned.
“We kind of believed it would always be there,” she said. “And look what happened.”
Harris’ outspokenness on abortion stands in stark contrast to Biden’s more reserved approach. Although he has long supported abortion rights, he mentions the word abortion less often and sometimes avoids it even when discussing the issue.
“I think the real star from a reporting perspective is the vice president,” said Mini Timmaraju, head of Reproductive Freedom for All, the activist organization formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League. “Look, Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris. Joe Biden has asked Kamala Harris to take the lead on this issue. This is going to give us a big contrast with the other side.”
After Harris’ appearance on “The View,” she received a notable review from Kayleigh McEnany, a former Trump spokeswoman who co-hosts a program on Fox News.
“She brought up abortion over and over again,” McEnany said. Regardless of the topic, “she immediately returned to abortion because she knows what is true, which is that the Republican Party lost every abortion ballot initiative after Roe.”
McEnany described herself as pro-life, but said that “what Kamala does, right or wrong, is very powerful among young women.”
While Harris and Democrats have embraced abortion as a campaign issue, Republicans are shying away or calling for a truce.
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is running for Republican presidential nomination, recently issued a plea to “find consensus” on the divisive issue.
“While I am pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said during a primary debate in November.
Trump has taken credit for helping to overturn Roe v. Wade, but he has opposed laws such as Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks, which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Republican candidate.
“You have to win elections,” Trump said recently during a Fox News town hall.
Harris’ team is still working on the schedule for the rest of her abortion-focused events. Each stop will likely include a speech and more intimate conversation with healthcare providers or women affected by the restrictions.
Wisconsin, Harris’ first stop, is a key battleground where an ongoing legal battle over abortion rages. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, Republicans argued that an 1849 law still on the books would effectively ban the procedure except in situations where a mother’s life was in danger.
“These extremists want to turn back the clock to a time before women were treated as full citizens,” Harris said in her speech on Monday.
Clinics across the state stopped offering abortions until a court ruled that the law did not apply to abortions. Republicans have appealed the decision and the case will likely be decided by the state Supreme Court.
Abortion has reshaped Harris’ tenure as vice president after previous struggles in dealing with intractable issues such as migration from Central America.
Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director, said abortion “focused her attention and her office in a way that nothing else had before.”
“The focus on abortion rights leveraged the vice president’s legal background, her political values and her substantive knowledge in a way that I didn’t see done on any other issue when I was there,” he said.
Vice presidents are rarely decisive figures in re-election campaigns. However, Harris has faced additional criticism because of Biden’s age — he would be 82 at the start of a second term — and her status as the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve in her position.
The fight against abortion will also increase its visibility.
“The president and the vice president appeal to different parts of the party,” Simmons said. “They are stronger as a team.”