Harris blasts Trump on abortion
Ariz. speech affirms key strategy in Biden campaign
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris traveled Friday to Arizona, a battleground state that was roiled this week by the reinstatement of a more than 100-year-old law banning nearly all abortions, and said there was one person to blame: Donald Trump.
During a campaign event in Tucson, Harris called the Arizona ruling “one of the biggest aftershocks yet” of the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the federal right to an abortion and put the issue into the hands of the states. And she hammered the point that Trump is responsible for the patchwork of state laws now governing abortion that have made access to it difficult, if not impossible, for millions of women across the country.
She branded the new restrictions in more than a dozen states “Trump abortion bans” and called him the “architect of this health care crisis.”
“What has happened here in Arizona is a new inflection point. It has demonstrated once and for all that overturning Roe was just the opening act … of a larger strategy to take women’s rights and freedoms,” Harris said. “Part of a full-on attack, state by state, on reproductive freedom. And we all must understand who is to blame: Former President Donald Trump did this.”
President Biden’s campaign has sought to highlight the contrast on abortion rights between him and Trump, including new ads featuring Biden and a woman who nearly died because of her state’s abortion ban. Harris’s visit to Arizona signaled that effort is only going to dial up heading toward the November election.
“It makes complete sense that this is a moment that shouldn’t be wasted or squandered,” said Arizona state Representative Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, a Democrat. “Here is an opportunity front and center to say look, elections do matter, and who we put in offices up and down the ballot affects our lives personally and can have very dire consequences.”
Before the Arizona Supreme Court decision, Trump on Monday emphasized his own position that abortion should be left to the states, triggering objections from the staunchly antiabortion wing of the Republican Party that would like to see a national ban.
In response to Harris’s remarks, Trump’s campaign on Friday pointed to his post on social media, in which he argued that the Arizona Supreme Court went “too far.”
Other Republicans were clear-eyed that the Supreme Court ruling could spell trouble for them politically.
“Anytime this election becomes something other than a discussion about the border and immigration and the economy and inflation, Democrats are winning. Abortion is not the playing field Republicans want to be on in Arizona,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona Republican political strategist. “I don’t know that Harris is all that popular here in Arizona, but this issue is popular, and they will take an advantage where they can get it.”
Harris has taken a leading role for the Biden administration on abortion since Roe was overturned by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022. She has gone so far as to visit an abortion clinic in her official capacity — believed to be a first for a vice president or president — and worked to compensate for Biden, who supports access to abortion but is less than the fullthroated ally that some Democrats want.
While Harris has highlighted the issue on the campaign trail since the day Biden launched his reelection bid, Friday was her first campaign event in a battleground state centered around reproductive rights. It came together quickly in the wake of the Arizona Supreme Court ruling that will let the pre-statehood law that bans providing nearly all abortions take effect.
Harris’s speech marked an escalation in the Biden campaign’s attempt to tie Trump to the changed reproductive health care landscape because he nominated three Supreme Court justices during his presidency who were pivotal in overturning Roe. The campaign event in Tucson underscored abortion’s central role in the Democrats’ election strategy.
The setting was also notable because Arizona is among a handful of states that could determine control of the White House and the Senate. Biden won Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020, and Democrats are hoping an abortion rights amendment that is likely to appear on the November ballot will juice turnout.
In a memo this week, Jen a senior adviser to the Biden campaign in Arizona, stated that while abortion had always been “central” to the 2024 race in Arizona, the issue is “more politically potent than ever.” The memo also tied Trump to the new restrictions.
When the federal right to an abortion was overturned, Arizona was thrown into a chaotic and confusing post-Roe gray area with competing abortion bans on the books.
Abortion access advocates tried to protect access through the courts, but on Tuesday, the state Supreme Court upheld a pre-statehood law that carries a penalty of two to five years in prison for people who provide abortions, unless it’s to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for pregnancies that are a result of rape or incest. The law is not yet in effect, and won’t be until at least until April 23. Current Arizona law allows abortions up to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Kari Lake, seen as the likely Republican candidate for the state’s open US Senate seat in November, distanced herself from the decision.
“This total ban on abortion that the Arizona Supreme Court just ruled on is out of line with where the people of this state are,” Lake said in a video. “I agree with President Trump we must have exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”
In a statement Friday, a Lake spokesperson said Harris was in Arizona to “fear monger” and tried to pivot to talking about the border.
US Representative Ruben Gallego, the likely Democratic nominee for the Senate seat, highlighted Lake’s record of opposing abortion rights, including her past praise of the prestatehood law.
“There is no better example, starker example, of black and white. Trump did this and [Kari] Lake was cheerleading the whole way,” Gallego told reporters Friday. “[My] campaign was already talking about that before, and now we’re going to keep talking about it all the way.”
In her remarks, Harris gave Gallego a shoutout, urging voters to “put this right” in November, not only by reelecting Biden, but by sending Gallego to the Senate and electing other Democrats down ballot.
As in several other states, Arizona abortion-rights advocates are working to add a question to the November ballot that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. The coalition behind that effort said it already has gathered the required number of signatures. In every abortion-related question that has appeared on a ballot since Roe was overturned, voters have sided with abortion-rights advocates. Harris urged support of this amendment as well.
“On the ground, people are just, they’re scared,” said Arizona Democratic Party chair Yolanda Bejarano. “With this Arizona Supreme Court ruling, it is a terrifying moment. But ... we’re going to do everything we can to vote out anybody who stands in the way of progress.”