- Biden will be in Florida one week before state’s abortion ban goes into effect
- On May 1, abortions will be banned after six weeks of pregnancy
- Trump has said abortion is a state issue
President Joe Biden will pound Donald Trump on the abortion issue in a rare visit to the former president’s home state of Florida on Tuesday.
Biden will be in Tampa one week before Florida’s abortion ban goes into effect. Trump will be in New York for the second day of opening arguments in the hush money case against him.
The president’s campaign argues that once Florida’s law goes into place – it bans abortions after six-weeks, which is before many women know they are pregnant – there will effectively be an abortion ban across the entire Southeast part of the nation.
President Joe Biden will make a rare campaign appearance in Florida on Tuesday
‘Many women in the southeast may have to drive for a day or longer to reach the closest clinic,’ Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a call with reporters on Monday.
‘There is one person to blame for this cruelty and it’s Donald Trump.’
The president’s re-elect team also argued Florida is in play for them this cycle.
‘With our large cash advantage the Biden campaign has many paths to victory and that includes Florida,’ Tyler said.
But this will be Biden’s first campaign related event in Florida in more than a year. He was last in the state in February 2023 when he spoke at the University of Tampa. He did appear in South Florida to raise money in January and visited the state last September to survey the damage from Hurricane Idalia.
Trump won Florida by a 3.4-point margin in the 2020 campaign, improving on his performance four years earlier when he beat Hillary Clinton in the state by 1.6 points.
The Biden campaign declined to offer specifics on their Florida strategy but argued the president traveling there is not ‘window dressing.’
Biden and his team having been trying to tie the 2024 election to access to reproductive rights across the country.
They see it as a top issue – and a winning issue for them – in every battleground state across the country.
Abortion rights proved a winning issue for Democrats in the 2022 midterm election when the party did much better than expected.
Biden has capitalized on the swath of abortion laws enacted around the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Donald Trump said the abortion issue should be left up to states
Thousands of pro-choice activists and allies rally in Orlando, Florida to protest the state’s abortion ban
Florida’s ban sparked outrage across the state
Earlier this month, Trump said the abortion issue should be left up to individual states to decide.
‘My view is now that we have abortion where everyone wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state,’ the former president said in a video posted to his Truth Social account.
Some conservatives slammed Trump for his position. He had previously hinted he would accept a nationwide 15-week ban on abortions.
In Florida on Tuesday, Biden is expected to try and tie the state’s law to the Arizona state Supreme Court decision that upheld a near-total abortion ban dating from 1864. The ruling was so controversial even Trump pushed back on it, saying he didn’t agree with it. As did the state’s conservative Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake.
Florida’s ban goes into effect on May 1st.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry caused outrage in the state and even among some Republicans, who worried the ban was overly restrictive.
Its implementation is expected to have a ripple effect across the Southeast, as women from nearby states have traveled to Florida to access legal abortion over the past two years. Almost 7,000 women travelled from out of state last year to receive an abortion performed by doctors in Florida, according to a report from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.
Florida voters have the ability to rescind the abortion ban if they approve Amendment 4 in November, which would allow abortions up to the time of viability, which is generally considered around 24 weeks. That measure needs 60% support from voters.
Trump has yet to say how he would vote on Amendment 4.
Abortion is banned in most cases in 14 states. Another seven states have restrictions that prevent abortion between six and 18 weeks into a pregnancy.
