Harris heads to Arizona days after restrictive abortion ruling, hoping to use reproductive rights to galvanize voters

Tucson, Arizona CNN —
Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday, hoping to use this week’s restrictive abortion ruling to mobilize voters who see November’s election as a referendum on women’s health rights.
Her visit to the battleground state comes on the heels of the Arizona Supreme Court ruling that revived a 160-year-old law barring all abortions except in cases when “it is necessary to save” a pregnant person’s life — thrusting abortion politics into the spotlight.
Harris has been crisscrossing the country as part of her reproductive rights tour since January, arguing that abortion rights hang in the balance with the results of the election. Last month, Harris visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota becoming the first sitting vice president or president to visit an abortion provider.
And at her campaign event Friday, Harris is expected to cast the court ruling as “one of the biggest aftershocks yet” since the overturning of Roe.
“Here in Arizona, they have turned the clock back more than a century on women’s rights and freedoms. The overturning of Roe was a seismic event. And this ban in Arizona is one of the biggest aftershocks yet,” Harris will say, according to prepared remarks. “We all must understand who is to blame. It is the former president, Donald Trump.”
Democrats have seized on abortion ahead of November, seeing it as a salient political issue that could spur moderate voters — particularly women — to turn out in droves against former President Donald Trump by tying the abortion bans directly to him.
Both Biden and Harris have repeatedly campaigned on Trump’s bragging that he crafted the conservative supermajority on the US Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade — which had federally protected the right to an abortion for almost half a century — in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
The Biden campaign is seeking to galvanize momentum in battleground Arizona following a Tuesday’s ruling, launching a seven-figure ad buy on the issue as it argues Republicans are “out of step.”
In a new 30-second ad, “Power Back,” President Joe Biden places the blame squarely on Trump. The campaign will spend seven figures on that ad and another ad introduced earlier this week with the story of a woman affected by Texas’ abortion ban.
The Harris team has focused on reproductive rights as an issue that it believes the vice president is uniquely positioned to lead on. The issue has been top-of-mind for the vice president, dating back to 2021, when she held a reproductive rights roundtable.
About half of registered voters in the United States say this year’s elections will have a “major impact” on access to abortion, and about 1 in 8 voters says that abortion is the most important issue driving their vote, according to a KFF survey.
The issue mobilized moderate and liberal voters in the midterm elections — drawing Democratic victories up and down ballots across the country.
“It’s going to be a driving issue,” one Democratic strategist told CNN, arguing that the Arizona court ruling served as another data point to bolster the party’s argument. “It offers a salient data point to counter Republican talking points that we’re the extreme ones.”
The Biden campaign is repeatedly working to drive the message that Trump “is responsible for the state of reproductive freedom in Arizona today.” As Trump works to thread a political needle on the issue, the campaign will continue to tie him directly to the policies.
Both Trump and GOP Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake released statements opposing the Arizona Supreme Court ruling. And Trump said on Wednesday he would not sign a national abortion ban into law if he were to become president — though his stance on abortion has been wishy-washy for decades.