WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden awkward comments about abortion On the debate stage this summer, it was widely seen as a missed opportunity — a failure, even — on a powerful and motivating issue for Democrats at the ballot box.
The difference was clearly visible Tuesday night when Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a powerful defense of abortion rights during her presidential debate with Republican Donald Trump.
Harris described the dire medical situations women have found themselves in since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the nation’s right to abortion in 2022. Harris immediately blamed Trump, who recalibrated the Supreme Court to the conservative majority that made the landmark ruling during his tenure.
Women, Harris told the national audience, are refused care as a result.
“You want to talk about what people wanted? Pregnant women who wanted to carry a pregnancy to term, who had a miscarriage, who couldn’t get emergency room care because providers were afraid they were going to jail, and she’s bleeding to death in a car in the parking lot?” Harris said.
The moment was a reminder that Harris is uniquely positioned to speak about this hot, national topic in a way that Biden, an 81-year-old Catholic who has long opposed abortion, never had before. felt nice to do.
Harris has been the White House’s public face for efforts to improve maternal health and ensure some access to abortion despite the Supreme Court ruling. Earlier this year, she became the highest-ranking U.S. official to make a public visit to an abortion clinic. clinic.
Dr. Daniel Grossman, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said he was pleased to see Harris highlight the challenges people face in states with abortion bans. “People who can’t get abortion care where they live, who have to travel, people who have had obstetric complications and can’t get the care they need because of the abortion bans,” Grossman said.
Harris, however, held back from providing specifics on what kind of restrictions — if any — she supports on abortion. Instead, she pivoted: She said she wants to “restore the protections of Roe,” which prohibited states from banning abortions before fetal viability, which is generally considered to be around 20 weeks.
Trump, meanwhile, danced around questions about his intentions to further restrict abortion, declining to say whether he would sign a national abortion ban as president.
Abortion advocates do not argue that Trump would sign a ban if it came to his desk.
Carol Tobias, chair of the National Right to Life Committee, said her group is not focused on a national ban “because it’s not going to happen. The votes are not there in Congress. You know, President Trump said he wouldn’t sign it. We know Kamala Harris won’t.”
Trump also falsely claimed that some Democrats want to “execute” the baby after birth, in the ninth month of pregnancy.
—
Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky.