In a speech this week, Vice President Kamala Harris blasted former President Donald Trump, who remains the front-runner for Republicans’ presidential nomination this year, for jumping onboard with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, which dismantled that decades-old legal framework at the national level for abortion access in the United States.
The court unveiled their decision against Roe with three Justices originally nominated by Trump himself on the bench of just nine members. Undoing those now defunct legal allowances for abortion had been, of course, a consistent goal among Republicans before Trump became president.
“And it is a decision he brags about,” Harris said, then quoting Trump’s remarks that he was “proud” of the overturning. “Proud? Proud that women across our nation are suffering? Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? Proud that doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for their patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”
Trump effectively taking proud ownership of the Supreme Court’s decision following his presidential term to undo those federal allowances for abortion helps set up this year’s presidential race as also a referendum on which vision for health care in the United States will make headway.
In the meantime, abortion has already proven to be a losing issue for Republicans at the ballot box.
In 2022 — in the months after the Supreme Court dismantled those decades-old abortion protections, Kansas voters, no matter the state’s GOP lean, rejected a proposed amendment to their state Constitution that would have substantially expanded the legal framework for restrictions in the state. Last year, Ohio voters approved an amendment that, in contrast, was set to establish baseline protections for abortion under their state Constitution, while Kentucky voters rejected a GOP candidate for governor — endorsed by Trump himself! — after a campaign in which abortion was a key issue. The list continues, including several statewide approvals of protective amendments in elections held late in 2022.
Donald Trump is “proud” that women across our nation have been robbed of their fundamental freedoms. pic.twitter.com/6x0UeHdOsM
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 23, 2024
