Biden and Harris frame 2024 against ‘extremist’ GOP plans to ban abortion nationwide

Another January 22 has come and gone without Americans’ constitutional right to abortion care affirmed by the US Supreme Court.

The dissolution of Roe v Wade’s decades-long precedent 18 months ago unleashed a wave of anti-abortion laws across the US, including more than a dozen states where abortion is effectively outlawed in all cases – stranding millions of women without adequate healthcare and exposing the scale of legal and medical minefields for patients and their providers.

President Joe Biden’s administration intends to frame the fight for abortion rights in unflinching terms as he campaigns for his re-election. Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking to supporters in the battleground state of Wisconsin on Monday, made it clear who was responsible: Donald Trump.

“As we face this crisis and as we are clear-eyed about the harm, let us also understand who is responsible, shall we?” she said in her remarks on what would be the 51st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Roe v Wade.

“The former president handpicked three Supreme Court justices because he intended for them to overturn Roe,” she said. “He intended for them to take away your freedoms. And it is a decision he brags about.”

Mr Trump has routinely taken credit for the reversal of Roe v Wade, with his appointment of conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who joined Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022.

“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Ms Harris said. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? Proud that doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for their