Vice President Kamala Harris visited an abortion clinic in Minnesota while the Biden Administration continues to focus on the end of Roe v. Wade as the 2024 election draws near.
The White House announced in December that Harris would go on a "Reproductive Freedom" tour beginning with an event in Wisconsin in late January. Harris’ March 14 trip will mark the first time a president or vice president has ever publicly toured an abortion clinic.
Harris met with staff members at the Planned Parenthood in St. Paul before addressing the media. She denounced abortion restrictions enacted in recent years as “plain old immoral.”
“How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what [doctors] need to tell them, and what is in their best interest?” said the vice president, per The Independent. “I'm here at this health care clinic to uplift the work that is happening in Minnesota as an example of what true leadership looks like. Which is to understand it is only right and fair that people have access to the health care they need, and that they have access to health care in an environment where they are treated with dignity and respect.”
Harris previously visited Wisconsin, California, Georgia, Michigan and Arizona during her pro-abortion tour.
“Minnesota enacted a statute in 2022 protecting the right to reproductive freedom, including abortion, contraception and fertility services. Abortion is protected under the state constitution,” reports The Hill. “But other states have restricted abortion following the Supreme Court ruling.”
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has stressed the danger facing women following the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in June of 2022. The Biden administration has called advocates for bans or restrictions on abortion “extremists” and described abortion as a “fundamental” freedom.
President Barack Obama spoke at Planned Parenthood’s 2013 national conference while he was in office – the first president to ever do so.
“Obviously this is a special national conference, because it’s been nearly a hundred years since the first health clinic of what later would become Planned Parenthood opened its doors to women in Brooklyn,” Obama said during his speech. “And for nearly a century now, one core principle has guided everything all of you do -- that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about their own health.”
He did not use the phrase abortion, according to a transcript of his remarks.
