Biden-Harris campaign to highlight abortion rights on 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade

As the country enters the 2024 election season, President Joe Biden’s reelection team has announced it will embark on an aggressive campaign highlighting the battle for reproductive rights, the Hill reported on Jan. 18.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the issue of abortion care has been a clear dividing line between the two major political parties. Democratic lawmakers and abortion rights activists have galvanized voters, won seats, and approved ballot measures largely based on the issue of reproductive rights.

“In 2024, a vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is a vote to restore Roe, and a vote for Donald Trump is a vote to ban abortion across the country,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of the Biden-Harris campaign, according to the website WisPolitics. “These are the stakes in 2024, and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows it.”

Vice President Kamala Harris will kick off a nationwide “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour with an appearance in Wisconsin on Monday, Jan. 22, the 51st anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe.

“Extremists across our country continue to wage a full-on attack against hard-won, hard-fought freedoms as they push their radical policies – from banning abortion in all 50 states and criminalizing doctors, to forcing women to travel out of state in order to get the care they need,” Harris said in a statement. “I will continue to fight for our fundamental freedoms while bringing together those throughout America who agree that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body – not the government.”

On Jan. 23, Biden and Harris, along with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, will speak at a rally in Northern Virginia on the looming dangers of state restrictions and bans on abortion care, the release from WisPolitics says.

“Virginians unequivocally rebuked the MAGA agenda and their attacks on women’s reproductive freedom, leading to Democrats retaining the Senate and flipping the House of Delegates to take full control of the General Assembly,” the Biden-Harris campaign said in a statement released to CBS News.

In a recent Fox News town hall in Iowa, former President Donald Trump bragged about his role in reversing Roe v. Wade, later saying he supports exceptions for “the life of the mother, rape, incest”: “You have to win elections. Otherwise, you’re going to be back where you were, and you can’t let that ever happen again,” he said. 

House Republicans have steered away from expressing support for a national ban on abortion and are now instead pivoting with two measures that interfere with access to abortion care, RollCall reports.

H.R. 6918 would prohibit the secretary of health and human services from restricting funding for so-called crisis pregnancy centers, clinics that work to dissuade people from seeking abortion care. The second, H.R. 6914, would require colleges and universities to provide pregnant students with information and support they would need “in carrying the baby to term and caring for the baby after birth.” The information will not include resources for obtaining contraception or abortion care. Both bills passed in the House on Jan. 18. 

Additionally, anti-abortion groups and some Republican lawmakers are looking to use the 1873 Comstock Act, a federal law that prohibits shipping through the mail “every article or thing designed, adapted or intended for producing abortion,” to stop the shipment of medications that are used in over half of all abortions in the United States. A Gallup poll conducted in May 2023 found that 69% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal at least in the first three months of a pregnancy.