Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign kicked off a bus tour on Tuesday aimed at amplifying the issue of reproductive rights in the leadup to November's election.
And they did so in West Palm Beach, Florida, choosing not only to begin the tour in a state with a high-profile abortion amendment on the ballot in November, but in former President Donald Trump's backyard.
The event on Tuesday featured Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who herself ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Republican television personality Ana Navarro, Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and others.
Sonia Suter, a professor of law at The George Washington University, told Spectrum News that that the event's setting in Florida was aimed at emphasizing Trump's role in the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Trump nominated three justices to the high court who were part of the majority that overturned the landmark 1973 ruling.
"The location is intended to sort of emphasize the fact that Roe was overturned because of the appointment of Supreme Court justices by former President Trump," Suter said.
It was a point that speakers on Tuesday tried to hammer home.
"My friends, I ask you, what better place to kick off the Harris walls reproductive freedom bus tour than in Donald Trump's backyard?" asked Wasserman Schultz.
"It is not lost on us that we are just ten miles from Mar-a-Lago, home of one Donald J. Trump," Klobuchar said. "He calls it the 'Winter White House.' I call it his retirement home."
Klobuchar talked about hearing "horrifying stories" from women about abortion in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned in 2022.
"Women turned away from emergency rooms, forced to the brink of death before receiving the care they need and that is what Donald Trump is so proud of," she recounted. "So let’s be clear, a second Donald Trump term would be so much worse."
It comes just days after Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, unveiled his new campaign promise to have the federal government or insurance companies cover the cost of in vitro fertilization, which the Harris campaign panned as "gaslighting," and separately announced his opposition to Florida's abortion amendment. Known as Amendment Four, the ballot initiative would bar restrictions or bans on abortion before fetal viability, which is typically around 23-24 weeks. The amendment needs 60% support to pass.
The state currently has a six-week ban in effect, which is before most women know they are pregnant.
Klobuchar told CNN earlier in the day Tuesday that she believes the issue of abortion puts the state in play for Democrats, despite its rightward shift in recent elections, citing the abortion amendment and the high-profile U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Rick Scott and former Democratic Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
"I think you're gonna see Florida in play and Amendment Four puts it on the map in a big way," the Minnesota lawmaker told the outlet.
The campaign says the reproductive rights tour will make at least 50 stops in the lead up to Election Day, “touching blue communities and red ones, with support for reproductive rights transcending party lines.”
“This election is about freedom – and the American people want and deserve the freedom to make their own health care decisions. Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to drag us back,” Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement last week announcing the tour. “As we crisscross the country, we’ll be driving that contrast home to red and blue voters and independents.”
Trump allies, however, believe the election will come down to kitchen table issues, like inflation, rather than abortion.
"I think it's important for voters in swing states to understand that the ballot initiative in Florida has no bearing on the cost of food in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan or anywhere else," Florida Rep. Byron Donalds told CNN in an interview over the weekend, calling the abortion amendment "far too radical."
Following their appearance at the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week, Amanda Zurawski, Hadley Duvall, and Kaitlyn Joshua, are also expected to join the tour. The three women have been sharing their stories of abortion, miscarriage, and pregnancy, and how denying abortion care to women can be life threatening.
Zurawski sued the state of Texas in the wake of the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court, following a miscarriage that led to a life-threatening case of sepsis after being denied abortion care. Joshua, in telling her story over the years, has detailed being turned away from two emergency rooms in the middle of a miscarriage. Duvall was raped and impregnated by her stepfather at age 12, and while she ultimately miscarried, her home state of Kentucky currently excludes exceptions for cases of rape or incest — meaning that women and girls in a similar situation are excluded.
“What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?” Duvall questioned on the DNC stage in Chicago.
Part of Harris’ stump speech over the last several weeks has been a promise that if Congress were to expand and protect reproductive rights with legislative action, she would sign the bill immediately. “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do,” Harris said during her rally in Savannah Thursday, adding a warning that despite Trump’s insistence that leaving the issue up to individual states is the right approach, he will sign a national abortion ban if elected.