U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris sought to make Donald Trump the face of Florida's strict new abortion ban Wednesday as Democrats hammer the issue ahead of November's presidential election.
"Across our nation, we witness a full-on assault, state by state, on reproductive freedom. And understand who's to blame: former president Donald Trump did this," Harris said in a Jacksonville, Florida speech. Florida's harsh new ban took effect Wednesday, outlawing all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in a state that had been one of the last in the southern United States with a relatively high gestational limit.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has bragged about how justices he nominated allowed the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court to revoke the national right to abortion in 2022, in turn paving the way for 21 states to bring in total or partial bans. The Florida ban took effect as Arizona's senate -- controlled by Republicans -- voted to repeal an 1864 law banning abortion, a month after the state's top court said the Civil War-era rule was still valid. US President Joe Biden had earlier slammed the "extreme" Florida ban in a statement, and like Harris pinned the blame on the man he likely faces in a bitter rematch in November.
"There is one person responsible for this nightmare: Donald Trump," he said. But it is Harris, the first female, black and South Asian vice president in American history, who has led the charge on a divisive subject that Democrat.
