President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday — the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision — Roe v. Wade — Three days before Thursday’s debate, former President Donald Trump took blistering blows over abortion rights.
“Trump has denied any less remorse for his actions,” Harris said at an abortion-rights rally in Maryland. “Instead, he cited ‘proud’ overturning of Roe. “My fellow Americans, we will be sued in a court of law for stealing reproductive freedom from American women. Donald Trump is guilty.”
Biden, Harris, the White House and their campaign have focused on the fight over abortion, an issue that has galvanized voters in both red and blue states over the past two years and that they see as critical to their chances of re-election in November. .
Biden’s surrogates were spread across the country: Harris was heading to Arizona for a roundtable on abortion after his Maryland rally; First Lady Jill Biden is in Philadelphia for campaign events; And second gentleman Doug Emhoff has three campaign events across Michigan.
Biden wasn’t on the track marking Dobbs’ anniversary; Instead he has been at Camp David since last Thursday and is participating in debate preparation with a dozen aides, including sitting in on the full 90-minute mock debates, ahead of this weekend’s showdown with Trump. But the president did comment on the legalization of abortion.
“Two years ago today, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court majority stripped women of their fundamental freedom to access the health care they need and deserve,” Biden said in a statement, “and the consequences have been devastating.”
Biden later said, “Donald Trump is the only person for this dream.”
In a video posted on social media, Biden read a post Trump wrote about how he was able to “kill Roe v. Wade,” saying: “Decades of progress were destroyed because the last guy was in the White House for four years.”
“We know what will happen if he gets four more. For MAGA Republicans, Roe is just the beginning,” Biden argued. “They’re going to ban the right to choose nationwide. Next comes IVF and birth control.”
The Biden campaign released a television ad about Kaitlin Joshua, a woman from Louisiana who recounted her experience with abortion restrictions and laid the blame at Trump’s feet.
“I miscarried at 11 weeks. The pain I felt was excruciating. I was turned away from 2 emergency rooms,” Joshua said. “That was a direct result of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Hunt.”
The ad is part of a larger $50 million ad blitz the campaign launched earlier this month.
Over the weekend at the Faith & Freedom Conference, Trump continued to boast that he chose the three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe, saying that while they took a lot of “heat” over the decision, it was the “right” choice.
“I faced severe attacks to select and confirm three outstanding Supreme Court judges,” he said. “We’ve achieved what the pro-life movement has fought for for 49 years, and we’ve taken abortion away from the federal government and back to the states.”
The Trump campaign on Monday pushed back on the Biden team’s unified message against the former president.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt branded Biden, Harris and Democrats “radical extremists,” accusing them of supporting “taxpayer-funded abortions up until birth.”
It’s an allegation the White House categorically denied on Monday.
“The president and the vice president don’t support abortion until birth, they don’t support abortion after birth, and it’s not really abortion,” said Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council. Call with reporters.
Leavitt, a Trump spokesman, said Democrats are “lying about President Trump’s position on this issue in a desperate attempt to scare voters. The truth is that the TOPS decision returned the decision-making power on this issue to the people of every state. Abortion.”
He later added: “President Trump strongly supports ensuring women have access to the care they need to build healthy families, including widespread access to IVF, birth control and contraception, and he always will.”
Congressional Republicans this month blocked bills protecting IVF and contraceptives as Democratic election-year news. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre condemned it Monday as “extreme,” “out of touch” and “false.”
At her rally, Harris was introduced by Kate Cox, a Texas woman who left her state to have an abortion because her life was in danger and was one of the guests of the first lady of the state of the union this year. address.
“Today, I’m happy to share that I’m pregnant again,” Cox gushed. “By then, when we welcome our baby into the world, I hope it will be a world led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
ABC News’ Lali Ipsa contributed to this report.
