(NewsInsights.org) – Suffering from chronically low approval numbers, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden have struggled to find an issue to rally voters. On Wednesday, April 1, the same day that Florida’s new “Heartbeat Protection Act,” a six-week abortion ban, took effect, Harris addressed voters in Jacksonville, Florida, to tie former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, directly to the issue.
In her speech, Harris described witnessing the “state-by-state” assault “on reproductive freedom.” She asked the crowd to “understand who’s to blame” for eroding those freedoms, concluding, “former president Donald Trump did this.”
Repeatedly using the phrase “Trump abortion ban,” Harris laid the blame for the reversal of women’s right to consult with their doctors on matters of reproductive health without fear of state reprisals at Trump’s feet. She argued that six-week bans like the one Florida adopted make women subject to the abortion ban before many of them even know they have become pregnant.
Harris pointed out that Trump has said he would leave the abortion issue up to the states, as the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization mandated. More than 20 states have adopted partial or total abortion bans, and several include no exceptions for rape or incest, a point that particularly disturbed the vice president.
In battleground states like Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and more, Harris has undertaken a Reproductive Freedoms Tour, hoping to inspire voters to engage in the November election.
On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) literally laughed at Harris’s efforts to garner more votes in his state. At a press conference, a reporter asked the governor whether he thought the state was in play given the Biden-Harris campaign’s efforts to engage voters on the new ban.
The governor said he welcomed the campaign spending “a lot of money in Florida.” He challenged the Biden-Harris campaign to “Light up the airwaves. Do it; light it on fire.” However, he predicted that Republicans would win at every ballot level regardless of their efforts.
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