WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris says “everything is at stake” on reproductive health rights in the November election, as the Biden campaign shifts its focus to contrasting the Democratic president’s positions Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump on the issue before their debate this week.
Harris’ comments come as the campaign announced more than 50 events would take place in battleground states and beyond to mark Monday’s second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision between Dobbs and Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down federal law nullified the right to abortion. Biden and his allies are trying to remind voters that the historic decision was made in 2022 by a high court that included three conservative justices nominated during Trump’s tenure in the White House.
“Every person, of whatever gender, should understand that if such a fundamental freedom, such as the right to make decisions about your own body, can be taken, you should be aware of what other freedoms may be at stake stand,” Harris said in a joint MSNBC interview 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 has taken credit for Dobbs with his conservative base while not supporting a national abortion ban sought by supporters of the religious right should he return to the White House.
In April, Trump said he believed the issue should be left to the states. He later stated in an interview that he would not sign a nationwide ban on abortion if it were passed by Congress. He has refused to elaborate on his position on women’s access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
At a campaign event Saturday, Trump said his administration had done “something amazing” with Dobbs, while acknowledging the political danger of pushing the issue further at this time.
“Every voter has to go with their heart and do what is right, but we also have to get elected,” he said.
Biden has started preparations at Camp David for the debate Thursday evening in Atlanta. Trump is expected to hold rallies at his Florida estate this week as part of an informal preparation process.
Duvall, of Owensboro, Kentucky, first told her story publicly last fall in a campaign ad for her home state’s governor’s race, in which she discussed 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 evening. Harris will mark the anniversary of the Dobbs decision on Monday with campaign events in Arizona and Maryland. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, leaves for Michigan on Monday.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., 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 make it to survive. Zurawski was forced to wait until she was diagnosed with a life-threatening form of sepsis before having an abortion.
“If there is a woman who is in that reproductive age, her life is at stake in this election,” Duvall said in the MSNBC interview. “And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never voted Democrat in your life. It’s a step off your high horse, because women, we don’t get to choose much, and at least you can choose who to vote for.
The Associated Press does not normally identify victims of sexual assault, but Duvall, 22, chose to be identified and has spoken out publicly about her experience and its connection to the abortion debate.
