WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden gave bumbling remarks about abortion on the debate stage this summer, it was widely viewed as a missed opportunity — a failure, even — on a powerful and motivating issue for Democrats at the ballot box.
The difference was stark, then, on Tuesday night, when Vice President Kamala Harris gave a forceful defense of abortion rights during her presidential debate with Republican Donald Trump.
Harris conveyed the dire medical situations women have found themselves in since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion in 2022. Harris quickly placed blamed directly on Trump, who recalibrated the Supreme Court to the conservative majority that issued the landmark ruling during his term.
Women, Harris told the national audience, have been denied care as a result.
“You want to talk about this is what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot?” Harris said.
The moment was a reminder that Harris is uniquely positioned to talk about the hot-button, national topic in a way that Biden, an 81-year-old Catholic who had long opposed abortion, never felt comfortable doing.
Harris has been the White House’s public face for efforts to improve maternal health and ensure some abortion access, despite the Supreme Court ruling. Earlier this year, she became the highest-ranking U.S. official to make a public visit to an abortion clinic.
Dr. Daniel Grossman, a University of California, San Francisco OB-GYN, said he was glad to see Harris highlight the challenges people face in states with abortion bans. “People who have been unable to get abortion care where they live, who have to travel, people who have suffered obstetric complications and are unable to get the care they need because of the abortion bans,” Grossman said.
Harris still hedged, however, on providing details about what type of restrictions – if any – she supports around abortion. Instead, she pivoted: saying that she wants to “reinstate the protections of Roe,” which prohibited states from banning abortions before fetal viability, generally considered around 20 weeks.
Trump, meanwhile, danced around questions about his intentions to further restrict abortion. He would not say whether he would sign a national abortion ban as president.
Anti-abortion advocates say they don’t believe Trump would sign a ban if it landed on his desk.
Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, said her group hasn’t been focusing on a national ban “because it’s not going to happen. The votes aren’t there in Congress. You know, President Trump said he wouldn’t sign it. We know Kamala Harris won’t.”
Trump also falsely claimed that some Democrats want to “execute the baby” after birth in the ninth month of pregnancy.
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Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky.