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Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet with abortion providers and officials in the Twin Cities on Thursday, in what is believed to be the first time a president or vice president has visited an abortion clinic.
The appearance at the health center is the latest leg of a national tour for Harris, who has emerged as the administration’s most outspoken defender of abortion rights. White House officials have said they are near the limits of their authority to protect abortion rights, but the issue has emerged as a keystone of their re-election strategy.
Harris is scheduled to tour the center Thursday with abortion providers and highlight what her administration has done to maintain access to abortions as conservative states tighten restrictions.
Ever since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and introduced restrictive laws and bans in neighboring states, Minnesota has become a haven for abortion seekers. The Planned Parenthood Association, a health research organization, found that the average number of abortions in the state increased by about 36 percent in the year after the Supreme Court’s decision.
Last year, Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill enshrining the right to abortion into state law, in an effort to ensure that the procedure remains legal no matter who takes office in the state. On Thursday, Harris will be joined by Minnesota Democrats, including Walz and Rep. Betty McCollum.
Just seeing a senior Democratic official walking into an abortion clinic would be the clearest sign yet of how the politics of abortion rights have changed for the party, and for the nation.
For decades, many Democrats have avoided directly discussing what strategists believe to be divisive issues. Instead, many notable people focused on the complexities, raised slogans like “safe, legal, and rare,” and joined Republicans in opposing taxpayer funding of the Hyde Amendment process. .
But the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade disrupted this old politics and energized voters whose support for abortion rights helped Democrats win a series of federal and state elections. created a coalition. A recent poll by KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health policy, found that one in five voters say abortion is the “most important issue” on their 2024 ballot, and that federal It turns out that a majority supports laws that guarantee government rights.
President Biden’s campaign is leaning toward abortion, running ads featuring testimonies of women denied access to abortions in conservative states, and three of the justices who voted to overturn Roe. emphasizes former President Donald J. Trump’s role in the appointment.
Biden has promised to restore federal abortion rights and maintain access to medical abortions, but he faces new threats from a lawsuit scheduled to be heard before the Supreme Court this month.
These assurances signal a notable escalation from Biden on this issue. Mr. Biden is a cautious Catholic who has spent decades caught between religious opposition to the process and his party’s policies. He said little about abortion rights during the 2020 campaign, reflecting his discomfort with discussion of the issue and his strategists’ disbelief that abortion would energize swing voters. It reflects what happened.
This time, Biden raised the issue as one of personal freedom and the right to make private healthcare decisions. However, he still expresses some misgivings about the procedure itself and often avoids mentioning the word “abortion.” In his prepared remarks for the State of the Union address, he was asked to say “abortion,” referring to a Texas woman who was unable to obtain an abortion because of state law. Instead, he said, the state of Texas “banned her acting ability.”
Mr. Biden prefers to discuss the issue in terms of restoring Roe through Congressional legislation. The bill codifying federal abortion rights has little chance of passage, given Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate and the president’s own intraparty disagreements over the bill’s scope. Probably not.
Mr. Harris took a much more aggressive approach. She has visited five states on a tour to speak about abortion rights, calling the proliferation of anti-abortion laws in Republican states a “health care crisis” for women.
Reid J. Epstein Contributed to the report.
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