As Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and their aides strategize for this week’s highly anticipated debate, one big question is how the two candidates will approach the Democrats’ great strength and the Republicans’ great weakness: abortion rights.
Harris has cast a guiding light on the issue, which has benefited his party in the polls since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Trump, who for years took credit for that decision, has tried to avoid its political backlash. controversial statements intended to help him appeal to voters who blocked full or near-total abortion bans in many Republican states.
The candidates are sure to clash over abortion in Tuesday’s debate, the first time they’ve faced each other head-on and contrasted their views on America’s reproductive practices.
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A growing share of voters in battleground states, especially women, say abortion is critical to their decision in November, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll. About as many voters rank abortion as their top issue as do immigration, even though the economy remains the top priority for Americans. For women under 45, abortion is the most pressing concern. And those polls also showed that more voters said they trusted Harris than Trump on abortion.
Harris is expected to build on that advantage during the debate, drawing attention to Trump’s role in appointing conservative Supreme Court justices who helped eliminate the constitutional right to abortion.
Harris’ approach: “Donald Trump did this”
In an effort to mobilize the Democratic base and sway some moderate Republican women and independents, the vice president has pointedly argued that the end of Roe and the subsequent decline are Trump’s fault.
“Donald Trump did this,” Harris often declares at his rallies, a line of attack he’s likely to push on the debate stage.
He often refers to the abortion restrictions enacted in 22 states after Roe was overturned as “Trump’s abortion bans.” She holds him responsible for legal threats against in vitro fertilization and accuses him of wanting to ban mifepristone, a commonly prescribed abortion drug. He also highlights the stories of pregnant women who have suffered serious harm after being denied access to medical care, saying their stories are representative of a broader Republican assault on American freedoms.
These were the arguments that President Joe Biden, an 81-year-old Catholic who has long been reluctant to even utter the word “abortion,” failed to defend in a debate against Trump in June. Harris is decades younger and talks about it easily.
“The fact that she’s done this work her whole career means she understands it in a unique way,” said Jessica Mackler, president of Emily’s List. The group seeks to elect women who support abortion rights and have energetically supported Harris. years. “He’s long understood that this is deeply personal. It’s intuitive for most voters. That’s why it has so much power.”
How Trump has changed on the issue
Harris is likely to pick up on Trump’s years of misrepresentation of abortion rights.
Since beginning his campaign for the third White House, the former president has been all over the map with his public and private comments on abortion. He has sought to convince social conservatives and anti-abortionists of his loyalty to their cause, while at the same time trying not to lose the support of pro-abortion-rights moderates.
In 2016, he won when he promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. Now, both on the campaign trail and in interviews, he has often praised his role in their appointment. But in an effort to play down the political fallout, he has also falsely argued that Democrats wanted to see Roe ousted as much as Republicans.
After months of hedging, Trump said in the spring that he believed abortion laws should be left up to the states and noted that he was “proud” of his role in ending Roe. But he has also repeatedly expressed opposition to a six-week abortion ban in Florida, his adopted home state. And days after arguing that abortion rights were best left to the states, he denounced an Arizona court decision that reinstated a 160-year-old ban and then successfully lobbied state Republicans to overturn it.
At the end of last month, in just 24 hours, Trump expressed his contradictions in this matter. First, he suggested in an interview that he might support a Florida ballot measure that would allow abortion up to 24 weeks, drawing the ire of social conservatives already frustrated by his attempts to distance himself from anti-abortion efforts.
The next day, he told Fox News that he would personally vote against the ballot measure, which would have left in place the same six-week ban that he has repeatedly called too strict.
And Trump, responding to attacks by Democrats over their stance on abortion rights in Congress, said on social media that his administration would be “great” for women’s “reproductive rights.”
Asked how Trump might respond to criticism of his stance on abortion, campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt sent a statement accusing Harris of a “radical record” and saying Trump is “looking forward to the opportunity to hold Kamala accountable for her dangerous. liberal lies.”
During the campaign, Trump has accused Harris of being too liberal on abortion, falsely claiming that he and other Democrats support abortions “after birth.” No state law authorizes the execution of newborn children. He made the same claim in a debate against Biden in June.
Biden struggled to address abortion at that point. When asked about it, he gave a rambling answer in which he tried to turn to immigration and then gave a false explanation of Roe v. Wade.
Do muted microphones play a role?
Harris has become a much more effective messenger on this issue. In March, he made the first official visit of a president or vice president to an abortion clinic.
Still, some Democrats fear the debate rules could hamper former prosecutor Harris’ ability to go after Trump on abortion because the candidates’ microphones are off when they’re not speaking.
Harris has had some of his most powerful debate moments in sharp back-and-forth debates. In something of an attempt to lower expectations, his campaign has publicly expressed concern that he won’t be able to take full advantage of a powerful emotional issue if he can’t challenge and check Trump in real time.
“It’s unfortunate that he’s not going to be able to follow up with the kind of prosecutorial questioning to hold him accountable,” Harris campaign senior spokesman Ian Sams told MSNBC on Thursday. “We know he is trying to mislead the country about his position.”
The Harris campaign had been fighting to get the microphones on throughout, but eventually agreed to the original rules that Biden had secured in the first debate.
What’s at stake in 2025 and beyond
Harris has vowed that, if elected, he would push for a federal law that would strengthen the protections once guaranteed by Roe. But without a stunning run of Democratic victories in November, Congress would almost certainly be unable to pass such legislation.
He has also reached out to more moderate voters with some of his language from the stump and formulated the issue to protect a woman’s personal freedom against government overreach.
“One doesn’t have to abandon one’s faith or one’s deeply held beliefs to agree that the government shouldn’t be telling one what to do with one’s body,” Harris said at a recent campaign event.
Harris campaign pollster Molly Murphy said Americans, particularly younger women and people of color, are responding to the message that Trump would go further on abortion restrictions in a second term.
The former president has announced that he is ready to allow states to monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who perform abortions. And Project 2025 — a conservative administration plan drawn up by Trump allies that Democrats are trying to link to the former president — contains detailed proposals to limit abortion rights.
“It reminds voters of how bad it’s been,” Murphy said. “And it reminds them that this is very much at stake in this election.”
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