As a law in Iowa takes effect that bans abortion before most women know they are pregnant, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is calling for action.
The campaign is using the Iowa ban as a jumping off point to launch a “Fight for Reproductive Freedom Week of Action” with events across key battleground states, which it said is “to ensure voters understand all that’s at stake for reproductive rights in this election.”
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff and surrogates including Reproductive Freedom for All CEO Mini Timmaraju, Texas-based radio host Ryan Hamilton and Kentucky reproductive rights activist Hadley Duvall will be on the trail in New Hampshire, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada, the campaign said.
The campaign kicked off the week with a new video that blamed former President Trump for the abortion ban in Iowa as well as the restrictions now in effect in more than two dozen states across the country.
“So today, Iowa put in place a Trump abortion ban, which makes Iowa the 22nd state in our country to have a Trump abortion ban,” Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, said in the video. “What this means is that one in three women of reproductive age in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban. So what we need to do is vote.”
“When I am president of the United States, I will sign into law the protections for reproductive freedom,” she added.
Democrats hope to use support for abortion rights to their electoral advantage this year both in specific states and nationally, and advocates are optimistic that Harris becoming the likely nominee has given a boost to that effort.
Harris, with a career-long history of supporting abortion access, has become the White House’s de facto voice for preserving reproductive rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
The vice president embarked on her Reproductive Freedoms Tour at the start of this year, crisscrossing the country to speak about abortion access in blue and red states alike and attack Trump for appointing the justices who struck down long-standing federal abortion protections. Earlier this year, she became the first U.S. vice president to visit an abortion clinic.