Biden and Harris to make reproductive rights push in first joint 2024 campaign event
Originally Published: 18 JAN 24 08:47 ET Updated: 18 JAN 24 10:38 ET By Arlette Saenz and Nikki Carvajal, CNN
(CNN) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to make their first joint campaign appearance of 2024 next week as they look to lay out how abortion rights are at stake in November’s election.
Biden and Harris, along with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, will speak at an event in northern Virginia on Tuesday, the same day as the New Hampshire primaries.
The event, which a campaign official said will focus on reproductive rights, comes one day after the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which enshrined the federal constitutional right to an abortion for decades before the Supreme Court overturned it in 2022.
The campaign said the president and vice president would highlight state efforts to enact abortion bans, including in Virginia. Democrats won control of the state’s legislature in 2023 after abortion featured prominently in the off-year election.
The campaign is hoping to use the Roe v. Wade anniversary on Monday as a chance to mobilize voters around the issue of abortion. They are planning to target women and swing voters with a new advertisement campaign in key battleground states over the weekend. Officials have been eager to highlight the efforts of former President Donald Trump to restrict access to abortion, including circulating his recent comments taking credit for overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Donald Trump is the reason that more than 1 in 3 American women of reproductive age don’t have the freedom to make their own health care decisions. Now, he and MAGA Republicans are running to go even further if they retake the White House,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the Biden campaign manager. “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.”
The Biden campaign has long argued abortion rights will be front and center in the 2024 campaign.
In recent years, the issue has been an influential factor in campaigns for elective office up and down the ballot. The GOP’s failure to meet expectations in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats retained control of the US Senate and only narrowly lost the House of Representatives, raised the prospect that the high court’s decision could alter the political landscape for years to come.
Harris specifically has become the administration’s foremost voice on reproductive rights, both in public events and behind the scenes in hours of policy discussions and internal White House deliberations. She led intense efforts to marshal outside allies, many of whom were staggered by the Supreme Court ruling itself – and pressing the Biden administration to do more in response.
The vice president is set to kick off a reproductive rights tour in Wisconsin on Monday. She is expected to highlight the true stories of American women affected by the Supreme Court’s decision.
“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,” Harris said in a statement last month.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS in the decision’s aftermath. And a CNN poll conducted in November found that Americans align more with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party on the issue of abortion.
Speaking with ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday, Harris once again excoriated Republicans for pushing abortion bans that include “denying a survivor of rape or incest the act to make a decision about what happens to their body next.”
Asked what the solution is, Harris answered: “Reelect President Joe Biden president of the United States.”
“And a majority of people in the United States Congress who agree that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs, to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body,” she continued. “If she chooses, she will talk with her priest or pastor, her Rabbi or her Imam. But it should not be the government telling her what to do.”
“In this year of our lord 2024, the government should not be telling women what to do with their bodies,” Harris said. “It’s that basic.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
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