In a Thursday speech at the now concluded Democratic National Convention that was held this week in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is this year’s Democratic pick for president, addressed reproductive rights — pledging to support expanding access to reproductive health care if elected president.
The landscape of access to such care in the United States was dramatically upended with the reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court of the 1970s ruling in Roe v. Wade that provided decades of national legal protections for abortion. Ending those protections opened up extensive opportunities for new restrictions on care, which Republican politicians, particularly at state levels, quickly rushed to utilize. And millions of Americans now live under far-reaching state restrictions on abortion.
And Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, expresses pride in the top court’s decision, which it made with three of his nominees on the bench.
“Well, I will tell you, over the past two years, I’ve traveled across our country, and women have told me their stories. Husbands and fathers have shared theirs. Stories of women miscarrying in a parking lot, developing sepsis, losing the ability to ever again have children, all because doctors are afraid they may go to jail for caring for their patients,” Harris said.
“And understand, he is not done. As a part of his agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion and enact a nationwide abortion ban, with or without Congress. And get this. Get this. He plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator, and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions. Simply put, they are out of their minds. And one must ask — one must ask, why exactly is it that they don’t trust women? Well, we trust women. We trust women,” she added to the crowd.
Harris’ predictions of what would take place in a potential new Trump term stem from various sources. CNN explained the background for worries about a potential national ban on abortion even without Congressional action: “Some scholars believe Trump could use the Justice Department to enforce a ban that would not just restrict people from sending the medication currently used in the majority of abortions through the mail, but would ban any kind of materials used to produce any kind of abortion.” They were referring to a 19th Century law called the Comstock Act.
Trump has apparently been wavering in what he says about whether he’d support a national ban, expressing support for such initiatives… but also distancing himself.
