For the first time, Vice President Harris visits a clinic in Minnesota where abortions are performed
Abortion, Kamala Harris
DARLENE SUPERVILLEMarch 14, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood clinic Thursday, marking what her office said was the first time
US
The president or vice president has visited a facility where abortions are performed as the White House escalates its defense of reproductive rights in this year’s election.
Right now we are facing a very serious health crisis in our country, Harris said at the St. Paul facility. And the crisis affects many people in our country, most of whom, to be honest, suffer in silence.
Although Democratic leaders in Minnesota have protected access to abortion, neighboring states have banned or severely restricted the procedure.
How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need, Harris said. We must be a nation that trusts women.
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Harris said she met twenty health
clinic providers who had created an environment where patients could be safe and free
judge judge.
Dr. Sarah Traxler, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States, introduced herself as a proud abortion provider and called Harris’ visit a historic moment. She said the number of patients visiting the clinic from out of state has doubled.
‘Everyone should have the right to access health care
Take care,” Traxler said.
Protesters gathered across the street, holding signs saying that life is a human right and that abortion kills a human being.
The White House has few options to protect abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe
vs
Wade two years ago, paving the way for Republican-led states to introduce restrictions or bans on the procedure. But the visit reflected Democrats’ intense focus on reproductive rights to rally their voters to re-elect the president
Joe
Biden in a likely rematch with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
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Harris, the first female vice president, has led the White House outreach, including her trip to Minneapolis-St. Paul area is part of a nationwide tour that began in January.
The decision to make a historic visit to a clinic, which also provides contraception and preventive wellness care, demonstrated her more aggressive approach to the issue than Biden. While Biden has vowed to reinstate Roe
vs
Wade’s protection if Democrats regain full control of Congress is that he tends to talk about the right to choose rather than talk about abortion.
After visiting the clinic, Harris was scheduled to speak at a Biden-Harris campaign event in St. Paul specifically for women.
There are no restrictions on abortion at any stage of pregnancy in Minnesota. Biden won the state by 7 percentage points in 2020 on his way to defeating then-President Trump.
Biden and Trump have each won enough delegates to be considered their parties’ presumptive nominees for president, and are staging a rematch in November.
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Biden and his Democratic surrogates have highlighted Trump’s comments in which the former president took credit for presiding over the end of Roe. Trump has put three conservative justices on the Supreme Court, tipping his ideological balance in favor of eliminating a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy with his 2022 decision in the Dobbs case
vs
Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Since then, Democrats have been encouraged by election victories in 2022 and 2023
both years
when access to abortion was on the ballot. And in his State of the Union address last week, Biden promised that we will win again in 2024.
In the speech, he also said that if voters send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.
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In Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz has established the right to abortion and other reproductive health care
passed into state law in January 2023 when he signed a bill intended to ensure that the state’s existing protections remain in place regardless of who sits on future courts.
Democratic leaders took advantage of their new control of both houses of the Legislature to push the bill through in the first month of the 2023 legislative session. They attributed the backlash to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe
vs
Wade for taking over the Senate and maintaining their majority in the House of Representatives in a year when Republicans expected gains.
Abortion is currently illegal in more than a dozen states, including Minnesota’s neighbors North Dakota and South Dakota, and is restricted in
adjacent
Iowa and Wisconsin. Minnesota has seen a surge in patients coming to the state for abortions because of restrictions elsewhere.
Superville writes for the Associated Press.

Fernando Dowling is an author and political journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. He has a deep understanding of the political landscape and a passion for analyzing the latest political trends and news.