Biden takes the abortion fight to Florida as he blasts the state’s six-week ban

Florida hasn’t given its electoral votes to a Democrat in over a decade — and since former president Donald Trump moved his primary residence there, it has become ground zero for his Make America Great Again movement. But President Joe Biden and the brain trust of his re-election campaign think opposition to the state’s abortion ban could put the state in play this November.

As Mr Trump continues to cool his heels in a New York City courtroom, Mr Biden on Tuesday will travel from Washington to Tampa, Florida. There, he will headline a campaign event focused on rallying women and supporters of reproductive rights just one week before the ban takes effect.

The draconian six-week ban, which was recently upheld and allowed to go into effect by Florida’s Supreme Court after being enacted under Governor Ron DeSantis, effectively prevents the procedure altogether. Most women won’t even know they are pregnant before they have gone over the limit.

Florida was previously an outlier among Republican-controlled states in the Southeastern US by having comparatively lenient abortion laws. Because of this, the state’s new legislation will make abortion inaccessible for a broad swath of Americans — unless voters approve a ballot initiative to enshrine reproductive rights into state law this November.

Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director, told reporters in a press conference on Monday that the bans in neighbouring states had caused abortion rates in Florida to “nearly double” in the years since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. But now women will have to drive “for a day or longer” to get reproductive healthcare, he added.

“There's one person to blame for this cruelty and that's Donald Trump,” he said,