VP Harris visits Florida as abortion ban limits women's options

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris looks on during a roundtable on criminal justice in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S. April 25, 2024. REUTERS/Bonnie Cash/File Photo

By Nandita Bose

JACKSONVILLE, Florida (Reuters) -U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris sought to blame Republican candidate Donald Trump for Florida’s six-week abortion ban that took effect on Wednesday, saying his Supreme Court picks when he was president cleared the way for the policy.

The remarks in Jacksonville, Florida, were the latest effort by Harris and President Joe Biden to keep their re-election focus on abortion rights, an issue Democrats are hoping will galvanize voters to pick them.

“Today, this very day, at the stroke of midnight, another Trump abortion ban went into effect here in Florida. As of this morning 4 million women in this state woke up with fewer reproductive freedoms than they did last night. This is the new reality under a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said.

Florida’s top court this month cleared the way for a six-week abortion ban, a time-frame before many women realize they are pregnant. It also said a ballot measure legalizing abortion until viability could be voted on this November, which could benefit Democrats in an election where abortion is a top issue nationwide.

Biden declared “Florida is in play nationally” when he visited last week, indicating Democrats could try to flip the state, which voted Republican in recent presidential elections.

The conservative U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade in 2022 opened the door for Florida and other states to set their own abortion laws. Trump campaigned in 2016 on adding judges who would overturn Roe and appointed three who did.

Harris has pushed for reproductive freedoms in more than 20 states and made a historic trip to an abortion clinic in March.

Democrats believe harsh restrictions such as those in Florida and Arizona, which earlier this month upheld a 160-year-old abortion ban, will benefit Biden given that U.S. voters overwhelmingly reject strict abortion bans.

“We believe the government should never come between her and her doctor. Never,” Harris said.

Arizona’s Republican-controlled House approved a repeal of an 1864 abortion law, with the state Senate poised to vote on it on Wednesday.

FEW OPTIONS FOR WOMEN IN U.S. SOUTH

Abortion access is now almost non-existent in southern U.S. states. Florida had been a refuge for abortion-seekers from states such as Alabama and Georgia until April’s ban passed.

In 2023, about 7,700 of some 84,000 abortions performed in Florida were for out-of-state residents, nearly 60% higher than two years earlier, state data show. About half of the state’s 50 clinics operate independently from larger groups such as Planned Parenthood. Several told Reuters they do not know how long they can remain open.

Trump has distanced himself from Arizona’s ruling even as he took credit for appointing the three U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and made state restrictions possible, saying it should remain a state issue and declining to support a federal ban.

He previously said women who get abortions should be punished and, in an interview published on Tuesday, said he would allow Republican-led states to track women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate their state bans.

“The states are going to make those decisions,” he told TIME magazine.

Biden has vowed to fight states’ anti-abortion measures. He slammed Trump’s latest comments that “once again endorsed punishing women for getting the care they need” as his campaign unveiled billboards denouncing Trump’s “extreme and out of touch anti-freedom agenda” in Michigan and Wisconsin where Trump will be campaigning later on Wednesday.

Florida, with a hefty 30 Electoral College votes, in recent years has shifted from a battleground state to a Republican stronghold that Trump won in 2020 with 51.2% of the vote compared with Biden’s 47.9%.

Some Biden aides think his and the party’s optimism it could win the state could be misplaced. Opinion polls compiled by election data website FiveThirtyEight show Trump with a substantial lead.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Trevor Hunnicutt; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons, Gerry Doyle and Deepa Babington)