TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 President Biden traveled to Florida on Tuesday to denounce that state\u2019s six-week abortion ban \u2014 just days before the law goes into effect \u2014 blaming former president Donald Trump for the erosion of reproductive rights across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s one person who is responsible for this nightmare \u2014 and he\u2019s acknowledged and he\u2019s bragged about it,\u201d Biden told a crowd of several hundred at Hillsborough Community College. \u201cIt\u2019s Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Repeatedly bashing Trump by name, Biden took his message on \u201creproductive freedom\u201d to a state where Democrats have lost ground in recent years but where they believe the abortion issue will galvanize voters. In his first major speech on abortion since Trump said the politically volatile question should be left to the states, Biden suggested he would return to the issue in the months ahead.<\/p>\n
Biden and other Democrats have sought to remind voters that Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, paving the way for strict abortion bans in many states. Biden\u2019s speech Tuesday was part of a broader Democratic effort to turn the 2022 Supreme Court decision into a rallying cry for the 2024 election.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump is worried voters are going to hold him accountable for the cruelty and chaos he created,\u201d Biden said. \u201cFolks, the bad news for Trump is we are going to hold him accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats \u2014 who have seen the abortion issue mobilize voters in ways that have delivered victories in deeply Republican states such as Kentucky, Kansas and Ohio \u2014 are pushing to elevate the issue in other conservative-leaning states in hopes of putting Trump and his fellow Republicans on defense.<\/p>\n
This month, the Florida Supreme Court approved a state law that would restrict most abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. Biden called the law \u201cbizarre\u201d but suggested that women would turn out in droves in November to \u201crestore those rights for the women of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t about states\u2019 rights. It\u2019s about women\u2019s rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump \u2014 who previously suggested the law, signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), was \u201charsh\u201d \u2014 made his own abortion policy shift April 8, saying the issue should be left to the states. But the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the next day that an 1864 law outlawing nearly all abortions should take effect, prompting immediate criticism from Trump and some other Republicans.<\/p>\n
The Arizona and Florida rulings \u2014 and Trump\u2019s latest posturing on the issue \u2014 have triggered a stepped-up effort by Democrats to blame the former president for the state of reproductive health care across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Arizona, did you see what happened when you left it to the states?\u201d Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) said at Biden\u2019s event, referring to the reversion to the 1864 law. \u201cIt\u2019s cruel and it\u2019s wrong. And in Florida, Governor DeSantis and the extremists in the Florida legislature are taking us backward as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida voters will have an opportunity to weigh in on the state\u2019s law. The state Supreme Court allowed a measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state\u2019s constitution to appear on the ballot in November. Like other such constitutional measures in Florida, the referendum would need to achieve 60 percent of the vote to pass. Trump, a Florida resident, has not said how he would vote on the measure.<\/p>\n
Democrats are hoping the ballot issue will increase turnout and make Florida \u2014 a state Trump won by 3.3 percentage points in 2020 \u2014 more competitive, at least for down-ballot races, if not for the presidency, said Susan MacManus, a political analyst based in the Tampa area.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can\u2019t just be about Biden running for president. It has got to also be about Democrats running for congressional and state legislative positions,\u201d she said, adding that while Biden receives low marks from young voters in the state, the abortion ballot measure could help him win additional votes from that key voting bloc.<\/p>\n
Trump and his Republican allies have sought to cast Biden and his allies as the real extremists on the issue, accusing Democrats of supporting late-stage abortions.<\/p>\n
But Biden, a practicing Catholic, has at times struggled to balance his personal beliefs and politics in public remarks about abortion. During a fundraiser last year, he said, \u201cI\u2019m not big on abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ata meeting of his top officials at the White House in January, Biden made sure to stipulate that he was not pushing for \u201cabortion on demand,\u201d but rather federal policy that would codify the protections that the Supreme Court justices outlined in their 1973 Roe decision.<\/p>\n
In his State of the Union address last month, Biden did not utter the word \u201cabortion,\u201d instead skipping over the term in his prepared remarks and opting for alternative language such as \u201creproductive freedom\u201d and the right to \u201cchoose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida, which has trended decidedly toward Republicans in recent years after decades of being the nation\u2019s largest swing state, has been a destination for people seeking abortions in part because it is surrounded by several states with strict bans on the procedure. In the months since Roe was overturned, many women in the South have traveled to Florida to receive abortions, fleeing restrictions in states like Alabama and South Carolina.<\/p>\n
More than 80,000 women get an abortion in Florida in a typical year, accounting for about 1 in 12 abortions in the country. When Florida\u2019s new restriction goes into place May 1, the closest option for someone seeking an abortion may be North Carolina.<\/p>\n
In Tampa, Biden even attacked Trump for selling a $60 Bible.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many times does he have to prove he can\u2019t be trusted?\u201d Biden asked, adding that the former president described the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe \u201cas a miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe it\u2019s coming from that Bible he\u2019s trying to sell,\u201d Biden said. \u201cI almost wanted to buy one just to see what the hell is in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caroline Kitchener and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 President Biden traveled to Florida on Tuesday to denounce that state\u2019s six-week abortion ban \u2014 just days before the law goes into effect \u2014 blaming former president Donald Trump for the erosion of reproductive rights across the country. \u201cThere\u2019s one person who is responsible for this nightmare \u2014 and he\u2019s acknowledged and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}