Kamala Harris slams Republicans for ‘weaponising’ abortion issue
US Vice President Kamala Harris has said the potential Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade represents an attack on women and lashed out at Republicans for ‘weaponizing’ the issue.
Her remarks offered a first glimpse of how the White House might use the battle for abortion rights to energize voters in the upcoming midterm elections.
‘Some Republican leaders are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women. How dare they. How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body. How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future. How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms,’ Harris said on Tuesday (3).
‘If the court overturns Roe v. Wade, it will be a direct assault on freedom,’ Harris, a Democrat, told attendees at a gala hosted by Emily’s List, an organization which works to get abortion-rights Democrats elected to office.
The event comes after a draft Supreme Court decision, leaked late on Monday (2), showed that the court’s conservative majority is prepared to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a women’s right to an abortion. The court confirmed the authenticity of the leaked document.
Harris’ speech was planned before the leak of the ruling, but has taken on added meaning.
Harris is a natural choice for the Biden administration to raise the issue on the midterm campaign trail if the Supreme Court adopts a version of the draft opinion and throws away five decades of federal protection of abortion rights.
Republicans are expected to take control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate after the midterm elections in November, but Democrats are now seeking to use the abortion issue to energize voters. Democrats now hold a narrow majority in both chambers.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans said they are more likely to back candidates who support the right to abortion in the November midterm elections, according to a Reuters/ Ipsos poll conducted on Tuesday (3).
The vice president has long championed women’s health, particularly related to abortion rights.
Harris, who has won awards from abortion rights groups, spoke at Emily’s List’s 30th anniversary gala in 2015 after launching her Senate bid, making a trip to Washington to address the group before even speaking about her campaign in her home state of California.
On Tuesday, she said the last 24 hours have made it clear where Democrats and Republicans stand.
Experts estimate that about one in four women will obtain an abortion in her lifetime, of whom 75 percent are low-income, 59 percent are already mothers, and 55 percent are experiencing disruptive life events such as losing a job, according to Caitlin Myers, an economics professor with a focus on the effects of reproductive policies at Middlebury College. US Senate to vote on abortion rights bill The US Senate will vote Wednesday (11) on a national abortion rights bill -- a process likely doomed to fail - after a leaked draft decision signalled the Supreme Court’s readiness to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade decision.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has called the draft ruling an ‘abomination,’ said he has teed up the vote on codifying the right to abortion in America, which the conservative-majority court appears poised to ban.
The prospects of success are virtually zero, given the blocking power of Republicans in an evenly divided 100-seat Senate where key legislation almost always faces a 60-vote threshold.
But the vote will nonetheless put lawmakers on record regarding one of the country’s most divisive issues, and Democrats hope the debate will galvanize voters to go to the polls in the midterm elections exactly six months from Sunday.
‘We will vote on Wednesday, and every American will see how every senator stands. They can’t duck it anymore,’ Schumer said at a press conference Sunday in New York.
‘Now they have to show which side they’re on.’
Republican-controlled states have taken steps to restrict abortion rights in recent months, given that overturning Roe v Wade would give states the ability to make their own laws on abortion.
Top congressional Democrat Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, reiterated her outrage about the court’s upcoming likely decision, telling CBS News on Sunday that ‘the court has slapped women in the face in terms of disrespect for their judgments about the size and timing of their families.’
With Democrats lacking the necessary majority to push through codification, the only other option would appear to be changing Senate rules to lower the number of votes required to pass such a bill.
But Republicans - and a few senators in President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party -- oppose such a move.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said ‘we will never give in’ to Republican efforts to roll back abortion rights protections.
‘We are half-citizens under this ruling,’ she told CNN, referring to the draft opinion. ‘And if this is put into law, it changes the foundation of America.’
Several conservative states are already shifting.
The southern state of Mississippi will ban abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or danger to the life of the mother, Republican Governor Tate Reeves said.
According to a poll released Friday (6) by the Pew Research Center, about 61 percent of Americans believe abortion should remain legal in all or most circumstances.