First lady Jill Biden speaks at a Women for Biden Harris event at Millersville University on June 23, 2024 (Capital-Star photo)
MILLERSVILLE — The Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago “drew new blood from healed wounds,” first lady Jill Biden said Sunday at a Women for Biden-Harris event in Lancaster County.
‘We are still fighting the battle that was settled decades ago’ Biden said during brief remarks at Millersville University. “We are the first generation to give our daughters fewer rights than we had. Radical Republicans are sacrificing women’s health, freedom and futures in the name of their political agenda, and that’s why we’re here today.”
The first lady once again placed the blame for overturning Roe v. Wade on the former president Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of Dobbs. She said if President Joe Biden is re-elected, he would strengthen access to reproductive health care and fight for a national law that would restore Roe’s protections, including access to in vitro fertilization and access to contraception.
Biden told the story of her high school friend who became pregnant as a teenager and had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in which she was declared mentally unfit before the doctor would perform the procedure to end her pregnancy. After the abortion, her friend could not go home, Biden said. She asked her mother if the friend could stay with them.
“And my mother didn’t hesitate,” Biden said. She and her mother never talked about it again after that and her mother never told anyone.
“Secrecy, shame, silence, danger and even death: that’s what defined that era for so many women,” Biden said. “And we are once again ashamed in that silence, fifty years later we are still fighting the battle that was settled so many decades ago.
Biden was introduced by Lancaster OB-GYN Dr. Sharee Livingston, who told the Capital-Star she is seeing firsthand the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade. “I talk to patients every day who are scared,” Richardson said. “I am here to push for legislation that improves care for all birthing women, but specifically for marginalized women.”
Trump, who campaigned in Philadelphia bragged about his Supreme Court nominees on Saturday, but that’s true presented conflicting positions on abortion in 2024. Before arriving in Philadelphia, Trump spoke at the conservative Christian Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 2024 Road to Majority conference in Washington, D.C., reiterating his position that abortion laws should be left to the states.
‘The people will decide, and that’s how it should be’ Trump said this in DC on Saturday. He has previously said he supports exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape, incest and the life of the pregnant patient, and earlier on the campaign trail he had said he would support a nationwide 16-week ban.
The first lady said Sunday that Trump had underestimated the power of women — and their anger — over the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“He sees us working late shifts and making grocery lists and driving to soccer practices and volunteering and taking care of our parents and raising money for those in need, and he thinks we can be ignored,” she said to boos from the crowd. “He doesn’t know that when our bodies are on the line, when our daughter’s future is on the line, we are immobile and unstoppable.”
Recent polls show Trump with a slight lead over Biden in Pennsylvania. The most recent poll from Emerson College shows that Trump has a 51% to 49% lead in a head-to-head matchup between Trump and Biden. Including potential third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West, the Emerson poll shows Trump’s margin over Biden widening, from 45% to 42%, with Kennedy ahead by 5% takes into account.
Kennedy submitted the required signatures will appear on the ballot in Pennsylvania late last week, but will likely face challenges before the August deadline.
In the 2020 election, Biden defeated Trump by just over 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania. But Trump Lancaster County won in that election, 57% to Biden’s 41%. Trump’s margin of victory in Lancaster County was even greater in 2016, when he defeated Hillary Clinton 57% to 38%
The rally in Lancaster County was one of several stops the first lady made in Pennsylvania on Sunday. She has been a frequent visitor to the state during the campaign, most recently making a surprise appearance at a Pride celebration in Pittsburgh on June 1and deliver the keynote speech at Erie County Community College’s commencement that same day.
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