Updated September 10, 2024 at 05:00 AM ET
As former President Trump struggles with messaging on the issue of abortion, Vice President Harris’ campaign is making a major push focused on the issue.
The Harris campaign is running ads focused on reproductive rights in several key states, and recently launched a bus tour that will make about 50 stops focusing on battleground states between now and Election Day, Nov. 5.
During a recent bus stop in Macon, Ga., Latorya Beasley told her story of sitting in her doctor’s office last year when she got the news that an Alabama Supreme Court decision meant her IVF treatment scheduled for about a week later would have to wait.
“My doctor told me despite preparing for this moment for months, we couldn’t proceed,” Beasley told a few dozen people who gathered at a park in Macon for the event organized by the Harris campaign.
Beasley and her husband were trying for their second child when fertility clinics across Alabama stopped offering the procedure. State lawmakers passed an emergency fix, but not before patients like Beasley lost time and money waiting.
“Donald Trump is responsible for what happened in Alabama and what happened to me,” Beasley said.
And, Beasley added, Georgia voters are no strangers to the impact of the Supreme Court decision that overturned decades of abortion rights precedent just over two years ago. Most abortions are currently illegal in Georgia after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Georgia Rep. Nikema Williams — who also chairs the state Democratic Party — says voters she talks to worry another Trump administration will mean more restrictions.
“They are very concerned about what a Trump administration means for what is left of their reproductive freedom,” she said in an interview with NPR aboard the bus between Macon and Atlanta on Friday. “What I’m hearing is that voters are very motivated by this issue.”
Throughout the campaign, Trump has offered mixed messages on reproductive rights. In a recent interview with NBC, he said Florida’s abortion ban — which, like Georgia’s, prohibits abortion after about six weeks — was too restrictive. He also seemed open to voting for a reproductive rights initiative.
After pushback from anti-abortion groups, Trump later said he’d vote against it.
Pollster Tresa Undem says abortion is a top voting issue for key Democratic constituencies, and Trump knows that.
“The polling’s no secret,” Undem says. “For independent women … pro-choice suburban women, he’s got to peel off some to win.
“There’s a huge gender gap right now. If he doesn’t close that, he loses.”
In a statement, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated his position that abortion policy should be left to the states. Leavitt said Trump, “strongly supports ensuring women have access to the care they need,” including IVF and contraception.
In the meantime, Democrats are trying to remind voters of what Trump has already said and done, and linking him to policy proposals like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which calls for more restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
On Friday, at another stop along the tour at a barbecue restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff reminded voters that the state has one of the nation’s worst maternal mortality rates, and a shortage of healthcare providers.
Ossoff, who recently led a Senate hearing on Georgia’s abortion ban, told NPR he’s hearing from doctors in the state about patients who’ve been denied abortions while facing medical complications.
“This is personal for Georgia women and it’s impacting the health of Georgia women,” he says.
Sitting with friends at the Atlanta event, Ursula Anderson says they’re all working to help elect Harris.
Copyright 2024 NPR
