Biden and Harris focus on reproductive rights, Trump
WAUKESHA COUNTY, WIS. >> Vice President Kamala Harris visited Wisconsin on Monday to begin a national tour in support of reproductive rights and highlight steps the Biden administration has taken to navigate around restrictive abortion laws in the United States.
She assigned blame for those laws to one person in particular: former President Donald Trump.
“These extremists are trying to take us backward, but we're not having that,” she told a crowd of cheering supporters in a painter's union building outside of Milwaukee.
The vice president's appearance, in front of a large banner that read “TRUST WOMEN,” was meant to add fire to an issue that Democrats believe could galvanize a broad swath of base voters and draw in independent ones.
Wisconsin is crucial to Biden's reelection prospects — he won there by about 20,600 votes in 2020 — and recent polling suggests a close race in 2024. It was also a target of Trump's efforts to spread falsehoods about illegal voting in 2020.
Harris said Trump had appointed three Supreme Court justices who had worked to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion 51 years ago on Monday. In her speech, Harris referenced Trump's recent comments that he was proud of his work.
“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Harris said, to applause. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? Proud that doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for their patients, that
young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers? How dare he.”
Back in Washington, Biden met with members of the administration's task force on reproductive rights. He criticized laws that ban abortion and framed the matter in terms of preserving personal freedoms, an argument that he and other Democrats have sharpened since Roe fell. He also reminded his audience that protecting abortion rights has been popular among voters whenever the issue appears on a state ballot.
“This is what it looks like when the right to privacy is under attack,” Biden said. “These extreme laws have no place, no place, in the United States of America.”
Also Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance for patients experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies to better understand their rights to care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA.
The law requires hospital
emergency rooms to provide medically necessary care, including abortions, in urgent circumstances. The department will also provide “training materials for health care providers and establish a dedicated team of experts” to support hospitals around the country, according to a fact sheet distributed by the administration.
Those efforts may add to the legal challenges surrounding the administration's efforts to bolster access to abortion. The administration is already in the middle of legal battles with Texas and Idaho over whether the law provides for the procedure. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Idaho case.
Democrats hope that a series of victories for abortion rights advocates in Wisconsin could signal a wider trend before the general election. In April, Wisconsin voters elected a liberal candidate to the state's Supreme Court by an 11-point margin. In September, Planned Parenthood began providing abortions again after a judge ruled that an 1849 state restriction against them — which had been invalidated by Roe until it fell — was not enforceable.