JACKSONVILLE, United States: Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday sought to make Donald Trump the face of Florida’s tough anti-abortion policy as Democrats take the issue seriously ahead of the November presidential election.
“Across our nation, we witness a full-on assault, state by state, on reproductive freedom. And understand who’s to blame: former president Donald Trump did this,” Harris said in a Jacksonville, Florida speech.
Florida’s ban took effect Wednesday, declaring all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy illegal in a state that had been one of the last in the southern United States with a relatively high gestational limit.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump has allowed nominated justices to allow the U.S. Supreme Court to strip the nation of abortion rights in 2022, leaving 21 states to bring in total or partial bans.
Florida’s ban comes after Arizona’s Republican-controlled Senate voted to repeal an 1864 abortion ban. It came a month after the state Supreme Court ruled that the Civil War-era laws were still in effect.
US President Joe Biden earlier condemned the Florida travel ban in a statement and, like Harris, blamed the man he is likely to face in a bitter rematch in November.
“There is one person responsible for this nightmare: Donald Trump,” he said.
But the first female, black and South Asian vice president in American history, Harris has led the charge on a divisive subject that Democrats hope will be a vote winner in the 2024 election.
Harris, 59, who has become the campaign’s leading voice on abortion rights, repeatedly used the phrase “Trump abortion bans” as she tried to link the Republican to the issue.
During Harris Jacksonville speech, supporters booed and cried “shame” on several occasions that she mentioned Trump’s name.
