Almost seven weeks before the US presidential election, Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris once again sharply attacked her Republican rival Donald Trump and his party for their restrictive abortion policies and accused them of “hypocrisy”. “These hypocrites now want to talk about how this is in the best interests of women and children,” Harris said at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday, referring to the strict abortion law in the US state, which she believes has led to the death of led two women.
It was one of the Democrat’s most powerful speeches to date, for which she received great applause from the – predominantly female – audience.
Harris later took up the issue at a rally in the liberal city of Madison in the swing state of Wisconsin, calling the ban on abortion “immoral.” “This is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect,” Harris said.
In both speeches, Harris mentioned the case of 28-year-old Amber Nicole Thurman, who received medical attention too late and died in August 2022 after complications from abortion pills due to Georgia’s legal situation.
“We’re going to make sure Amber isn’t just remembered as a statistic,” Harris said in Atlanta. The day before, she had met Thurman’s family at a campaign event hosted by talk show icon Oprah Winfrey.
Restrictive abortion regulations came into force in Georgia and 21 other US states after the Supreme Court in June 2022 abolished the nationwide right to abortion that had existed for almost 50 years and placed jurisdiction over abortion rights in the hands of the states.
During his term in office, Trump nominated three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, which significantly changed the balance of power on the Supreme Court in favor of conservatives and led to the decision against the nationwide right to abortion.
Trump has often boasted that his Supreme Court decisions paved the way for the nation’s abortion rights to be repealed. Since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee two months ago, Harris has regularly criticized Trump and his party for this approach.
Meanwhile, voters in three states have begun early in-person voting. Polling stations have been open since Friday in Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota, where voters can throw their ballots into the polls before November 5th.
The polls predict an extremely close race between Trump and Harris, so the results from a handful of states are likely to ultimately decide the winner of this year’s election.