Harris attacks Trump over Roe v Wade at first campaign rally with Biden

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris kicked off their first joint campaign rally of 2024 in Manassas, Virginia, on Tuesday, with a focused plea for voters to send them back to the White House on one key issue: protecting abortion rights.

This fight over abortion, they said, is about freedom.

“Extremists have proposed and passed laws that criminalized doctors and punished women. Laws that make no exception even for rape or incest,” said Harris, who spoke first, before the US president.

“And let us all agree: one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body.”

Virginia was a telling first stop for the 2024 campaign, where Biden and Harris were accompanied by first lady, Jill Biden, and the second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Last year, during the state’s elections, Virginia Republicans failed to take control of the state legislature after campaigning on a 15-week abortion ban. Seven other states have also voted directly on abortion-related ballot referendums since Roe fell at the hand of the right-leaning US supreme court in 2022; in each case, including inred states, abortion rights supporters won.

Now, Biden and Harris are betting that outrage over the decision to overturnRoe – the result of the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case out of Mississippi – will send them back to the White House.

“I don’t think this court and the Maga Republicans have any clue about the power of women in America,” Biden told the crowd, referring to the loyal base of supporters of Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again election slogan. “I don’t think they have any clue. But they’re about to find out.”

Stories of women who say they were denied medically