(Washington) ‘We will not be intimidated’: Vice President Kamala Harris launched a fervent plea for abortion on Tuesday, putting this burning issue at the heart of the 2024 campaign.
The Democrat was warmly welcomed on a university campus in the American capital to chants of “four more years!” just hours after Joe Biden declared his candidacy.
Calling herself “proud” to run alongside the octogenarian leader, Kamala Harris dwelt at length on the abortion restrictions put in place by “extremist” elected officials across the country – an issue she is very committed to. .
“We live in a time when so many of our hard-won freedoms are under attack,” she criticized, accusing the Republican opposition of wanting to ban abortion nationwide.
The Biden administration is betting that abortion could once again mobilize its base in the 2024 presidential election – as it did in the midterm elections last November.
After the Supreme Court ruling that shattered constitutional abortion protections, Democrats, especially younger ones, turned out to vote in droves.
Several states with conservative majorities had also voted in favor of this right. According to polls, the majority of Americans want to protect access to voluntary termination of pregnancy.
A sign that the Democrats want to try to turn the trial in the next election? Crossed-out “abortion is on the ballot” T-shirts were handed out at the entrance to the amphitheater where Kamala Harris spoke.
Stephanie Nash, head of an association facilitating abortions in Virginia, catches one, promising to “keep up the fight.”
This black woman is thrilled to see Kamala Harris, the first woman and first person of color to be vice president, “use her office to make her voice heard.”
“I was so looking forward to seeing her! adds Naudia Thurman, a 19-year-old African-American student, who “hopes” that the issue of abortion will be decisive in 2024.
However, “I think it would also be important for Biden to be there”, judges the psychology student, according to whom women are too often forced to take the lead on this issue.
Although a fervent Catholic, Joe Biden has also become a convinced defender of the right to abortion in the face of attacks from the American religious right.
For his first trip since his declaration of candidacy, the Democratic president had however chosen to surround himself with American workers. The offensive against the middle class is another priority of the “Biden-Harris” tandem for 2024.
