On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Tucson, Arizona, aiming to portray former President Donald Trump as the driving force behind the wave of restrictive abortion bans cropping up across the nation following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate the federal right to abortion.
This marks Harris’s second visit to the battleground state this year, coming shortly after the state Supreme Court upheld a longstanding 1864 law prohibiting nearly all abortions.
“Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis,” Harris is expected to say, according to an excerpt of her prepared remarks obtained by CBS News. “And that’s not a fact he hides. In fact, he brags about it.”
And a second Trump term “would be even worse,” Harris will warn.
“If Donald Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban,” she is to say. “How do we know? Look at his record.”
Trump has not explicitly endorsed a national ban on abortion; earlier this week, he stated that the matter should be left to the discretion of individual states, asserting that “Whatever they decide must be the law of the land.”
Harris’s Friday event, framed as a campaign rally, provides her with the platform to openly criticize Trump and Republicans more forcefully than she typically does during official White House visits to battleground states. Since Tuesday’s ruling, Arizona has become a focal point of national abortion debates. Both Republicans and Democrats recognize the significance of this issue, understanding that it could sway the outcome of the upcoming Arizona elections and, potentially, the presidency.
In March, Shine My Crown reported on Harris’ visit to Planned Parenthood in St. Paul, Minn. Thursday, where she called new laws restricting abortion a “health care crisis.”
Harris’ visit to one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations providing reproductive and sexual healthcare was believed to be the first official visit by a vice president, according to The New York Times, adding that it is not believed any presidents have ever visited an abortion clinic in the nation’s history.
Speaking to a pool of reporters inside the clinic, Harris said the conservative backers of the new anti-abortion laws were “extremists.” She added that these new laws would make it difficult for pregnant women to receive emergency care. Furthermore, many clinics providing reproductive and sexual healthcare to millions of Americans would shut down.
“These attacks against an individual’s right to make decisions about their own body are outrageous and, in many instances, just plain old immoral,” she said. “How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need, to tell women what is in their best interest. We have to be a nation that trusts women.”
