- Kamala Harris became the face of the Biden campaign’s attacks on Trump’s abortion rights.
- Harris lashed out at Trump during a Friday rally in the battleground state of Arizona.
- The former president tried to steer clear of the topic.
Vice President Kamala Harris is making sure abortion rights remain at the forefront of the 2024 campaign.
Harris repeatedly took aim at former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally Friday night in Arizona, claiming he was solely responsible for the state Supreme Court upholding an 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions.
“Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis, that’s not a fact he’s hiding,” Harris said at a rally in Tucson. “In fact, he brags about it.”
The vice president has long been outspoken in her advocacy for reproductive rights. She is the first president or vice president to visit an abortion clinic, an occurrence that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. Harris has also held a series of events since January focused on reproductive rights, although, unlike those previous rallies, the Biden-Harris re-election campaign hosted Friday’s event.
Unlike President Joe Biden, Harris doesn’t seem to feel the same remorse he does when talking about the issue. According to The New York Times, Harris even advocated for her to appear in Tucson, home to the University of Arizona, to focus on abortion rights instead of student debt before the state Supreme Court issued its controversial decision 4 -2.
Harris has consistently pushed his party on the issue. During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, then-Sen. Harris said states with a history of restricting abortion rights should be forced to get federal approval before passing new laws. That system would mirror pre-approval requirements for voting laws under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the same time, Biden has struggled before following progressive pressure to end his decades-long support for the Hyde Amendment, which limits federal funding for abortions .
Apart from Harris, the Biden campaign has run numerous ads specifically focused on abortion. The campaign also announced it would spend seven figures on an advertising blitz focused on abortion rights in Arizona. In a new ad, Biden looks directly into the camera, vowing to “fight like hell” for the millions of Arizona women who have lost their reproductive freedom since the Dobbs decision.
Republicans, including Trump, have been quick to condemn the state court’s decision, but are still grappling with the political reality of the US Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade. The former president has repeatedly boasted about his role in appointing the three justices who gave the Supreme Court the margin it needed to issue its landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson.
Trump unsuccessfully tried to abandon abortion.
Trump, of course, had no say in the appointment of any of the seven Arizona Supreme Court justices. All seven, including the one judge who recused himself from the case after his Facebook post calling abortion “the greatest genocide known to mankind,” were appointed by GOP governors. On Friday, before Harris’ rally, Trump publicly pleaded with the Arizona Legislature to repeal the 1864 law.
“The Arizona Supreme Court went too far with its abortion decision, adopting and upholding an inappropriate 1864 law,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “So now the Governor and the Arizona Legislature must use HEART, COMMON SENSE and ACT IMMEDIATELY to fix what happened.”
Even before the decision in Arizona, the former president tried to wash his hands of the subject.
Trump said the future of abortion rights should be determined at the state level, either through legislation, at the ballot box, or a combination of the two. His declaration left many questions unanswered, especially given the changing views.
Some political allies were also disappointed that Trump no longer supports a nationwide abortion ban. The Trump White House has backed legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions in cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother. On Friday, speaking alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump said he no longer needed to support a national abortion ban because Roe had been overturned.
“We overturned Roe v. Wade and did something that no one thought was possible — we’ve given it back to the states, and the states are working very brilliantly, in some cases conservatively and in some cases not conservatively, but they’re working and it’s working the way it’s supposed to,” Trump said.
Harris referenced Trump’s comments during his speech and said Americans should not be led to think the former president would not support a ban.
“This is what Trump’s second term looks like – more bans, more suffering and less freedom,” she said. “Just like he did in Arizona, he basically wants to take America back to 1800. But we’re not going to let that happen.”
