The race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be waged and won over abortion. Pick a fighter. | Opinion

A day after Joe Biden’s exit from the race, Kamala Harris seems destined to challenge former president Donald Trump, who just one week ago survived an assassination attempt and urged his supporters to “Fight, fight, fight” at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Well, choose a fighter, America.

Harris will fight for reproductive freedom while Trump fought against Roe v. Wade.

Harris will back a woman’s right to an abortion while Trump has changed his position on abortion too many times to count. (Actually, CNN has counted, and he’s changed his position 15 times in 25 years.)

A race that seemed poised to be about the age of its candidates and their positions on immigration will still focus on that, but make no mistake: This election will now be waged and won over the divisive issue of abortion.

Choose. A. Fighter.

The two candidates’ positions couldn’t be more stark. Trump was the first sitting president to attend the March for Life Rally in 2020. Harris was the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic in March, something no peer or president had ever done.

Trump installed three of the six U.S. Supreme Court justices who helped overturn 51 years of settled legal precedent by jettisoning Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. He is now so comfortable with it being a states’ rights issue that he rewrote the Republican Party’s platform to allow states to set abortion policy and removed the GOP foundation for a federal abortion ban that dated back 40 years.

As the AP reported: “The policy document sticks to the party’s longstanding principle that the Constitution extends rights to fetuses, but removes language maintaining support for an ‘amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,’ a passage in the party platform first included in 1984.”

Over a four-day Republican National Convention that galvanized the GOP last week, few speakers mentioned abortion, but on day one, Trump picked a running mate whose views on abortion have not shifted over the years. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance staunchly opposes it.

Asked during his Senate campaign if anti-abortion laws should include exceptions for rape or incest, Vance replied, in full, “I think two wrongs don’t make a right. At the end of the day, we’re talking about an unborn baby. What kind of society do we want to have? A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded?”

Asked in that interview if a woman should be forced to carry a child to term after she has been the victim of incest or rape, Vance replied: “Look, my views on this have been very clear, and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that’s wrong. It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term. It’s whether a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question, really, to me is about the baby. We want women to have opportunities. We want women to have choices, but above all we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life. Right now our society doesn’t afford that, and I think it’s a tragedy, and I think we can do better.”

“The circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient?” The question was about incest and rape.

Vance’s words should and do speak for themselves, but note what seems a small but telling point: that Vance said “women and young boys in the womb” but omitted young girls. Beyond any doubt, he would extend the same right to all unborn children, but that’s not what he said in an otherwise clear and concise answer about women’s rights.

Context matters, and every word from either prospective president or vice president will have weight on this issue.

That’s how closely people on either side of it — and journalists seeking to hold these powerful politicians accountable — will be watching and listening.

On Saturday, a day before Biden’s departure, Harris took to X, tweeting, “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump would sign a national abortion ban and restrict access to contraception if given the chance. That is what’s at stake in November. We will stop him.”

Harris’ comments have likewise been clear on abortion throughout her career, but Trump actually said in April that he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban if he were reelected president. That pledge reversed one he made to sign a 20-week ban in 2016.

It’s worth exploring that campaign. In 2016, few who saw it will forget this exchange Trump had with Chris Matthews, who asked him, “Should abortion be punished?”

Trump: “There has to be some form of punishment.”

Matthews: “For the woman?”

Trump: “Yes.”

Amid an uproar, Trump walked that reply back within hours, releasing a statement that said doctors performing the procedure should be punished, but not the women undergoing it. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb,” he said. “My position has not changed — like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.”

Except that his position had changed. And would change again.

Look, there is little doubt Trump’s position on abortion helped win him enough votes in a close election to stop Hillary Clinton from being the first female president in U.S. history that year. And there is little doubt now the American people view abortion laws, if not abortion itself, differently than they did in a world where Roe v. Wade was settled law.

Polls have consistently shown how divided the nation is over the issue, but in past surveys and at this moment, most Americans support abortion, in at least some circumstances.

An April 2024 Pew Research survey shows that 63% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases while 36% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. A May 2024 Gallup survey shows 50% of Americans believe it should be legal in some circumstances, 35% in any circumstance, and 12% in no circumstance, and that 54% of Americans consider themselves pro-choice while 41% consider themselves pro-life.

Here’s how divisive the issue proved In South Carolina: The state’s five female senators, including three Republicans, united last year to block a total abortion ban, and the three GOP leaders lost their jobs over it in GOP primary elections this year.

Since Roe v. Wade’s demise left states in charge, six states have voted on related constitutional amendments. And women’s rights advocates are six for six. Four states — California, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont — protected reproductive freedom rights in their constitutions, and two others — Kentucky and Kansas — rejected limits on them in theirs.

Notice anything about that list? Michigan, one of the handful of swing states that pundits say will likely determine the 2024 presidential election, is on it.

Eleven other states will have constitutional amendment votes related to abortion on their ballots in 2024, bringing people to the polls in great numbers in many states. That list includes battleground states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. South Carolina, incidentally, will likely never let voters decide a constitutional amendment on abortion because of the state’s ban on citizen initiatives as well as the state’s ruby red politics.

Of note, Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin had the most razor-thin vote margins in 2020, and Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the battleground states disputed by Trump after the 2020 election. Those are some of the key states that could determine the winner in 2024. The mantra that every vote counts may never be more true.

On Sunday, the president of Emily’s List, a political action committee focused on electing pro-abortion rights women to office, wrote this on X: “This election will be fought and won on the issue of reproductive freedom, and @kamalaharris has been a pro-choice champion her entire career. She is well-positioned to turn out the voters we’ll need to win this election, especially women, voters of color, and young voters.”

Biden was a supporter of reproductive rights as well, but his abortion comments were among the inexplicable answers he gave at a disastrous debate June 27 when he had what can now clearly be called the worst debate performance in American history, looking feeble and faltering as Trump told made more than 30 false or misleading claims.

“I supported Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters,” Biden said that night. “First time is between the woman and the doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the woman and the state. The idea that the politicians, that what the founders want is the politicians to be the ones making the decisions about a woman’s health is ridiculous. That’s the last. No politician should be making that decision. A doctor should be making those decisions. That’s how it should be run. That’s what you’re going to do. And if I’m elected I’m going to restore Roe v. Wade.”

Compare that word salad with the impactful comments Harris gave in a speech on International Women’s Day in March. Of course, she will keep abortion rights front and center going forward.

That day, Harris criticized the growing number of state abortion laws that don’t make exceptions for rape or incest, saying a formative experience when she was young was when her best friend who was being molested by her stepfather came to stay with her.

“The idea that someone who survives a crime of violence to their body, a violation of their body, would then be told they won’t have the authority to make a decision about what happens to their body next,” she said. “That is immoral. That is immoral.”

“Today an untold number of women are silently suffering,” she added. “Women who are being subjected to profound judgment, women who are being made to feel that they did something wrong, that they should be embarrassed, as though they are alone. So to these women, I say, ‘We see you and we are here with you and we are always going to stand by you. You are not alone.’”

Later in that speech, Harris called Trump “the architect of this health-care crisis” and criticized him for saying he was proud to get rid of Roe v. Wade.

“He is proud,” she said. “Proud that women across our nation are suffering, proud that doctors and nurses could be thrown in prison for administering care, proud that young women have fewer rights today than their mothers and grandmothers. How dare he!”

People can and should argue about abortion policy while respecting those with differing views, as difficult as that can be. It is heavy, complex and emotional to discuss its many facets: the humanity and faith and bodily rights and sexism and science of the issue.

Now a repeat race that had many Americans shaking their heads, between a doddering octogenarian and a distasteful septuagenarian, has been undone, and the entrance of a woman means the race will be waged and won over how Donald Trump, 81, and Kamala Harris, 59, discuss abortion and rally their supporters between her nomination and Nov. 5 to turn out and vote on it.

Choose a fighter, America, and let’s debate.

We’ll see who’s a fighter then.

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