WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Joe Biden awkward remarks about abortion On the debate stage this summer, it was widely viewed as a missed opportunity – or even a failure – on an important and motivating issue for Democrats at the ballot box.
The difference was clear when Vice President Kamala Harris vigorously defended abortion rights on Tuesday night. during her presidential debate with Republican Donald Trump.
Harris described the dire medical situation women have faced since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the nation’s right to abortion in 2022. Harris quickly blamed Trump, who re-aligned the Supreme Court with the conservative majority that made the landmark ruling during his tenure.
Women, Harris explained to the national audience, are refused care as a result.
“You want to talk about what people wanted? Pregnant women trying to carry a pregnancy to term, having a miscarriage, being denied care in the emergency room because health care workers are afraid they’ll go to jail, and she bleeds to death in a car in the parking lot?” Harris said.
The moment was a reminder that Harris is in a unique position to speak about the volatile national issue in a way that Biden, an 81-year-old Catholic who has long opposed abortion, never has. felt pleasant to do.
Harris has been the White House’s public face for efforts to improve maternal health and ensure some access to abortion despite the Supreme Court ruling. Earlier this year, she became the highest-ranking U.S. official to publicly visit an abortion clinic. clinic.
Dr. Daniel Grossman, an ob-gyn at the University of California, San Francisco, said he was glad Harris highlighted the challenges facing people in states with abortion bans. “People who have not been able to get abortion care where they live, who have to travel, people who are suffering from birth complications and cannot get the care they need because of the abortion bans,” Grossman said.
Harris, however, declined to provide details on what, if any, abortion-related restrictions she supports. Instead, she changed her mind: she wants to “restore the protections of Roe,” which prohibits states from banning abortions before fetal viability, generally considered to be around 20 weeks.
Trump, meanwhile, avoided questions about his intentions to further restrict abortion. He declined to comment on whether he would sign a national abortion ban as president.
Abortion opponents say they don’t believe Trump would sign a ban if it landed on his desk.
Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, said her group has not focused on a national ban “because it’s not going to happen. The votes aren’t there in Congress for it. You know, President Trump has said he wouldn’t sign it. We know Kamala Harris isn’t going to do it.”
Trump also falsely claimed that some Democrats wanted to “execute” the baby after it was born in the ninth month of pregnancy.
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Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky.
