WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to reliably Republican Texas just 10 days before Election Day to refocus her campaign against former President Donald Trump on reproductive health, a crucial issue for Democrats this year.
According to her campaign, Harris will visit Houston on Friday for an event with women affected by the state’s restrictive abortion laws following the repeal of Roe v. Wade passed by the Supreme Court in 2022. She will go there after spending time in Georgia, another state with a restrictive law.
Since that 2022 Supreme Court decision, modern abortion restrictions have been in place in most Republican-controlled states, including 14 that ban the procedure at any stage of pregnancy. Harris has argued that Trump – who nominated three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who later voted to overturn Roe v. Wade agreed – is responsible for the deterioration of medical care for women and that he would seek further restrictions.
Campaign officials viewed Harris’ plan to visit Texas as an unconventional way to capture the attention of voters in battleground states that are inundated with campaign ads and routine campaign events. The last non-theater visit Harris made was to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in early September to promote her miniature business tax plan. Since then she has traveled to the seven contested states.
“Texas is the stage for this event,” said David Plouffe, senior campaign adviser. “But for us, the people on the battlefields are the most important audience.”
Plouffe said the vice president was making the trip “to really tell a story about Donald Trump’s role in eliminating Roe v. “To tell Wade what that means for people in a state like Texas and what’s at stake — if you live in a state that doesn’t currently have one.” Abortion ban — that could be coming to you if Donald Trump wins.”
In 2016, Democrats, confident of their chances against Trump in his first run for the White House, sent their candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to Texas, Iowa and Ohio in hopes of landing in the Electoral College. although they lacked signs of problems in Democratic-leaning states that sent Trump to the Oval Office.
“We’re not doing that,” Plouffe said, dismissing the idea that the campaign is trying to compete in Texas. “We move away from the battlefields because we believe it will help us on the battlefields.”
He said it made “very strategic sense” to go somewhere like Texas, “where there are the most horrific and tragic stories about what’s happening, and then link that directly to the threat that voters in those states are without Current bans should be feared. “Donald Trump’s potential next term.”
Women affected by abortion bans have advocated for Harris, including Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who went into premature labor, developed sepsis and almost died after doctors said they could not intervene to perform an abortion. Because Zurawski did not receive adequate medical care, there was a risk of allowing the procedure. Harris also highlighted the story of Amber Thurman, a Georgia mother who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat her complications from an abortion pill.
Harris will be endorsed Friday by Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who is making a major bid to unseat Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. She is also scheduled to record a podcast interview with Texas author and Brené Brown.
Trump has also tried to motivate his supporters with events outside the battlefields. He has a rally planned at Madison Square Garden in New York this weekend and one at the Coachella music festival site in California last week.
Texas embodies the post-Roe landscape. The strict ban on abortion prohibits doctors from performing abortions as soon as cardiac activity is detected, which can happen as early as six weeks or sooner. As a result, women, even those who had no intention of terminating a pregnancy, are increasingly suffering from poorer medical care, in part because doctors cannot intervene unless she is experiencing a life-threatening condition or a “significant impairment of importance.” “To prevent bodily functions.” The state has also become a battleground for litigation; The U.S. Supreme Court voted in favor of the state ban just two weeks ago, leaving a lower court’s decision in place.
Complaints that pregnant women in medical distress are being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have increased as hospitals wrestle with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion. Several Texas women have filed complaints against hospitals for failing to terminate their failed and threatening pregnancies because of the state’s ban. In some cases, women lost reproductive organs.
Harris was asked in an interview with NBC News whether she would be willing to make concessions to secure congressional action to restore abortion rights if she were elected and had to work with a Republican-controlled Congress.
“I don’t think we should make concessions when we talk about the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s body,” she said.
Anti-abortion groups responded quickly. Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, released a statement saying, “So not only is she pro-abortion, she is anti-religious freedom.” Duly noted.”
Trump has continually shifted his stance, giving vague and contradictory answers to questions on an issue that has become a major vulnerability for Republicans in this year’s election. He recently said he would vote against a constitutional amendment in Florida that would seek to repeal the state’s six-week abortion ban.
About six in 10 Americans believe their state should generally allow a person to have a legal abortion if they do not want to become pregnant for any reason, according to a July poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Voters in seven states, including some conservative ones, have either protected abortion rights or rejected attempts to restrict them in statewide votes over the past two years.
In his first year as president, Trump said he was “pro-life with exceptions” but also said “there needs to be some form of punishment” for women who seek abortions – a position he quickly reversed.
At the annual “March for Life” in 2018, Trump spoke out in favor of a nationwide ban on abortion from the 20th week of pregnancy. In March, Trump suggested he might support a nationwide abortion ban for about 15 weeks, before announcing he would instead leave the matter to the states.
