Vice President Kamala Harris railed against efforts in Washington and in Republican-led states to restrict abortion on what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, invoking fundamental American values such as freedom to make the case for protecting abortion access despite the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate constitutional protections for it.
Leading the administration’s response on commemorating Roe on Sunday, Harris methodically detailed fights throughout history for certain liberties, such as civil rights and the right to vote for women, and tied that to access for abortion, which Harris called the “fundamental, constitutional, right of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”
“Can we truly be free if families cannot make intimate decisions about the course of their own lives?” Harris said in a fiery speech before a boisterous crowd of 1,500 people in Tallahassee, Florida. “And can we truly be free if so-called leaders claim to be quote, I quote, on the vanguard of freedom while they dare to restrict the rights of the American people and attack the very foundations of freedom?”
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