US VP Kamala Harris visits Abortion Clinic

In a visit believed to be the first of its kind by a president or vice president, US Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the crucial election subject of reproductive rights on Thursday by visiting an abortion clinic.

The Democrat remarked, “We have to be a nation that trusts women,” while visiting with staff members at the Minnesota Planned Parenthood facility in Saint Paul.

The first female Black and South Asian vice president in US history, Harris declared, “These attacks against an individual’s right to make decisions about their own body are outrageous.”

The historic visit is a part of Harris’s countrywide tour addressing the sensitive subject in the wake of the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling to overturn the abortion rights of all women.

The topic has been emphasised in US President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign as a vote-winner, despite Republican opponent Donald Trump’s constant claims to credit for selecting the justices who made the decision possible.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, twenty-one states have implemented complete or partial abortion restrictions, and some Republicans are advocating for a federal ban.

A group of roughly twenty anti-abortion demonstrators held signs that said, “Abortion is not health care” and “Planned Parenthood = Abortion,” outside the clinic Harris visited.

Harris referred to those who oppose abortion as “extremists.”

Thanking the clinic personnel for having “dedicated their lives to the profession of providing health care in a safe place that gives people dignity,” she expressed her admiration for them.

In his yearly State of the Union address to Congress last week, Biden vehemently championed reproductive rights and cautioned Republican lawmakers who oppose abortion of the “power of women.”

In addition, he promised to oppose any attempt to pass legislation banning abortion on a federal level and to work towards securing the right to the procedure in law should he be elected to a second term.

Since the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed access to abortion for all Americans, was overruled by the Supreme Court, the White House has drawn attention to the decline in reproductive rights in the country.

Despite being a devoted Catholic, Biden has been steadfast in his support of abortion access during his time as president.

Since Roe was overruled, similar protections have won out on every state ballot measure pertaining to the matter, giving Democrats hope that voters will be considering it when they cast their ballots in November.

During the president’s speech last week, First Lady Jill Biden hosted two prominent activists in the reproductive rights movement.

Kate Cox, a mother from Texas, was one of them. She filed a lawsuit last year to seek the right to an abortion, but in order to get an emergency abortion for her nonviable pregnancy, she had to leave the state.

Latorya Beasley of Alabama was also present. Her in-vitro fertilisation procedure was stopped after the state’s supreme court decided last month that frozen embryos need to be treated like children.