Vice President Harris slams Trump on anniversary of Supreme Court abortion decision
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Vice President Kamala Harris slammed former President Donald Trump on the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
Harris pronounced Trump guilty of rolling back women’s freedoms by appointing the three top court judges who voted to strike down a woman’s right to choose.
“It was premeditated,” the veep told a crowd of supporters Monday in Maryland, in a throwback to her days as a prosecutor. “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty,”
President Biden, who was at Camp David preparing for his debate with Trump, issued a statement marking what he framed as a grim anniversary.
“Donald Trump’s Supreme Court majority ripped away the fundamental freedom for women to access the health care they need and deserve,” Biden said.
“Taking away the long-held right to an abortion represents an assault on freedom, the Constitution and the values shared by a majority of Americans,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat.
Democrats hope abortion rights will be a galvanizing issue for their supporters heading into the November presidential election, especially in several states where referendums backing reproductive rights will be on the ballot.
Harris jetted, for a second reproductive rights event Monday, to swing-state Arizona, where Democrats recently forced Republicans to repeal a near-total abortion ban enacted in 1864.
Trump has tried to dodge questions about abortion, saying the issue should be left to the states, while bragging about appointing the conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe.
The Florida resident has refused to say if he will vote for a referendum in his home state that would scrap a draconian ban on nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women even know they are expecting.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in the so-called Dobbs case that was issued on June 24, 2022, opened the door for Republican states to enact ever stricter bans on abortion. About half of the states, including virtually all of the Deep South and Great Plains, now have bans on the procedure.
The ruling also unleashed a fierce political backlash that has badly burned Republicans.
Democrats credit the issue with helping them stave off an expected GOP red wave in the 2022 midterms, and they believe it can help them win over a small but crucial slice of swing voters in the presidential race between Biden and Trump.
More than 60% of Americans believe abortion should be mostly legal, polls say.
Democrats say conservative Republicans are not just a threat to surgical abortion. They say right-wing lawmakers are plotting to ban abortion medication and even contraception and in vitro fertilization.
The right-wing Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled that IVF, which involves destroying unused frozen embryos, violates a state constitutional amendment proclaiming that life begins at conception.
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