Biden campaign reveals why they think Joe can WIN Florida and how Trump’s ‘cruelty’ led women to ‘drive a day’ to get an abortion
- Biden will be in Florida for a week before the abortion ban takes effect
- From May 1, abortion will be prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy
- Trump has said abortion is a state issue
President Joe Biden will grill Donald Trump on the abortion issue on Tuesday during a rare visit to the former president’s home state of Florida.
Biden will be in Tampa for a week before Florida’s abortion ban goes into effect. Trump will be in New York for the second day of opening arguments in the hush money case against him.
The president’s campaign argues that once the Florida law goes into effect — which bans abortions after six weeks, which for many women means they don’t know they are pregnant — there will be an effective abortion ban across the southeastern part of the country .
President Joe Biden will make a rare campaign appearance in Florida on Tuesday
“Many women in the Southeast may have to drive a day or more to reach the nearest clinic,” Biden campaign director Michael Tyler said in a call with reporters on Monday.
“There is one person responsible for this atrocity and that is Donald Trump.”
The president’s re-elected team also argued that Florida is in play for them this cycle.
“With our large cash advantage, the Biden campaign has many paths to victory, including Florida,” Tyler said.
But this will be Biden’s first campaign-related event in Florida in more than a year. He was last in the state in February 2023 when he spoke at the University of Tampa. He appeared in South Florida in January to raise money and visited the state last September to survey the damage from Hurricane Idalia.
Trump won Florida by a margin of 3.4 points in the 2020 campaign, bettering his performance four years earlier when he defeated Hillary Clinton in the state by 1.6 points.
The Biden campaign declined to provide details on their strategy in Florida, but argued that the president traveling there is not “window dressing.”
Biden and his team have tried to tie the 2024 election to access to reproductive rights across the country.
They see it as a top issue – and a winning issue for them – in every battleground state across the country.
Abortion rights proved to be a winning issue for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections, when the party fared much better than expected.
Biden has taken advantage of the series of abortion laws enacted across the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Donald Trump said the abortion issue should be left to the states
Thousands of pro-choice activists and allies are gathering in Orlando, Florida to protest the state’s abortion ban
The Florida ban sparked outrage across the state
Earlier this month, Trump said the decision on the abortion issue should be left to individual states.
“My view now is that we have abortion where everyone wanted it from a legal point of view, the states will determine this by vote or legislation, or perhaps both. And whatever they decide, it must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state,” the former president said in a video on his Truth Social account.
Some conservatives condemned Trump for his position. He had previously hinted that he would accept a nationwide ban on 15-week abortions.
In Florida on Tuesday, Biden is expected to try to link the state law to the Arizona Supreme Court decision that upheld a near-total abortion ban dating from 1864. The statement was so controversial that Trump even pushed back, saying he didn’t. I don’t agree. Just like conservative Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake.
The ban in Florida goes into effect on May 1.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry sparked outrage in the state and even among some Republicans, who worried the ban was too restrictive.
Its implementation is expected to have a ripple effect in the Southeast, as women from nearby states have traveled to Florida over the past two years to access legal abortion. According to a report from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, nearly 7,000 women traveled from out of state last year to have an abortion performed by Florida doctors.
Florida voters have the opportunity to repeal the abortion ban if they pass Amendment 4 in November, which would allow abortions up to the point of viability, which is generally considered to be about 24 weeks. That measure needs 60% support from voters.
Trump has yet to say how he will vote on Amendment 4.
Abortion is banned in most cases in fourteen states. Another seven states have restrictions that prevent abortion between six and eighteen weeks of pregnancy.