Trump ‘guilty of taking away abortion rights’
US president Joe Biden’s campaign used the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning abortion rights yesterday to spotlight Donald Trump’s role in the ruling, as Democrats zeroed in on the issue ahead of November’s election.
Vice-president Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, said Mr Trump was “guilty” of taking away reproductive rights from women.
First lady Jill Biden and other Democrats also speaking yesterday hope to mobilise volunteers and voters around protecting the patchwork remains of abortion access in the country.
“Donald Trump is the sole person responsible for this nightmare,” Mr Biden said in a statement.
He said the reversal two years ago of the landmark Roe v Wade ruling of 1973, which gave constitutional protection to abortion rights, had been “devastating”.
“This is a fight for freedom: the fundamental freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not having her government tell her what to do,” Ms Harris said at a campaign event in Maryland.
Mr Trump appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices during his 2017-21 presidency, leading to a change in the court’s balance that sparked the 5-4 abortion ruling in 2022.
Ms Harris called the plan to overturn Roe v Wade “premeditated” and achieved with the help of “accomplices”.
“In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty,” she said.
Since the 2022 ruling, more than 20 Republican-led states have imposed restrictions, while the unpopularity of the decision, even in some conservative states, made it a political liability for Republicans during mid-term elections in 2022. Abortion access is now almost non-existent in southern states, forcing tens of thousands of women to cross state lines for abortions, and sparking a rise in medication abortion.
Mr Biden’s team believes the issue could swing the tight November 5 election his way.
He will focus on getting a law passed that restores the rights of Roe v Wade if re-elected, White House gender policy council chair Jennifer Klein told reporters yesterday.
Mr Trump said in April that abortion laws should be set by individual US states, stepping away from a national abortion ban that anti-abortion groups and some parts of his Republican Party have pushed for.
On Saturday, Mr Trump addressed a crowd of evangelical voters at the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington.
“We have also achieved what the prolife movement fought to get for 49 years, and we’ve gotten abortion out of the federal government and back to the states,” he said.
Some Republican lawmakers have introduced a resolution in the US Congress celebrating the 2022 ruling, although it is unlikely to be voted on in a Senate controlled by Democrats.