WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Kamala Harris says “everything is at stake” with reproductive health rights in November election as Biden campaign intensifies your focus in contrasting the positions taken by Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump on the issue before their debate this week.
Harris’ comments come as the campaign announced it would hold more than 50 events in swing states and beyond to mark the Supreme Court’s second anniversary on Monday. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which struck down the federal legal right to abortion. Biden and his allies are trying to remind voters that the historic decision in 2022 was made by a high court that included three conservative justices appointed during Trump’s tenure in the White House.
“All people, regardless of sex, must understand that if a freedom as fundamental as the right to make decisions about one’s own body can be taken, be aware that other freedoms may be at stake,” Harris said in a joint interview from MSNBC with Hadley Duvall, an abortion rights advocate from Kentucky who was raped by her stepfather as a child. Part of the interview aired on Sunday.
The Biden campaign believes abortion rights could be a galvanizing issue in what is expected to be a close general election.
Trump took credit for Dobbs with his conservative base, while stopping short of supporting a national abortion ban sought by supporters of the religious right if he returned to the White House.
In April, Trump said he believed in the issue should be left to the states. He later stated in an interview that he would not sign a national abortion ban if it were passed by Congress. He has refused to detail his position on women’s access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
At a campaign event on Saturday, Trump said his administration did “something that was incredible” with Dobbs, while also acknowledging the political danger of pressing further on the issue at this time.
“Every voter has to follow their heart and do what is right, but we also have to be elected,” he said.
Biden has begun private preparations at Camp David for Thursday night’s debate in Atlanta. Trump is expected to hold meetings at his Florida property this week as part of an informal preparation process.
Duvall of Owensboro, KentuckyHe told his story publicly for the first time last fall, in a campaign ad for the gubernatorial race in his home state, discussing the consequences of abortion restrictions, especially those without exceptions for rape or incest.
First lady Jill Biden planned to hold a campaign event with Duvall in Pittsburgh on Sunday night. Harris is scheduled to mark the anniversary of Dobbs’ decision on Monday with campaign events in Arizona and Maryland. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, will leave for Michigan on Monday.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, was heading to Wisconsin on behalf of the Biden campaign with Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who was initially denied an abortion after being told she had a condition that meant her baby would not survive. Zurawski was forced to wait until she was diagnosed with a life-threatening case of sepsis before having an abortion.
“If there is a woman of reproductive age, then her life is at stake during this election,” Duvall said in the MSNBC interview. “And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never voted Democrat in your life. It’s getting off your pedestal, because women, we can’t choose much, and you can at least choose who to vote for.”
The Associated Press does not normally identify victims of sexual violence, but Duvall, 22, chose to be identified and spoke publicly about her experience and its connection to the abortion debate.
