Kamala Harris accuses Donald Trump of ‘gaslighting’ America on abortion during Arizona visit

Kamala Harris used a speech in Arizona to accuse Donald Trump of trying to take women’s rights “back to the 1800s” and “gaslighting” America over his abortion views, arguing the former president denied his role in setting the stage for the state this week to uphold a near-total abortion ban.

“What has happened here in Arizona is a new inflexion point,” Vice-President Harris said during a Friday speech, suggesting that Donald Trump’s support for abortion restrictions and appointment of conservative justices to the Supreme Court, who later struck down Roe v Wade, were key tipping points leading to the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold an 1800s-era abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.

“It has demonstrated once and for all that overturning Roe was just the opening act of a larger strategy to take women’s rights and freedoms, part of a full-on attack, state-by-state, on reproductive freedom. And we all must understand who is to blame: former president Donald Trump did this,” Ms Harris said.

The Biden administration official warned the crowd that a second Trump term could mean a nationwide abortion ban, despite the former president’s recent assurances he wouldn’t sign such a bill into law.

“Now Trump wants us to believe he will not sign a national ban,” Ms Harris added at the event. “Enough with the gaslighting. We all know if Donald Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban.”

The Arizona visit is the latest in a string of trips from the vice president to key swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia, all of which the Biden campaign carried on narrow margins in 2020.

In March, during a trip to Minnesota, Ms Harris became the first president or vice president to