Vice President Kamala Harris declared that the country is facing a health crisis after she made a historic visit to an abortion clinic in Minnesota.
“Many of you have asked why am I here at this facility,” Harris was quoted by USA Today after touring the St. Paul Health Center – Vandalia, which remained open to patients during her visit. “It is because right now in our country we are facing a very serious health crisis, and the crisis is affecting many, many people in our country, most of whom are frankly silently suffering.”
“We have to be a nation that trusts women,” the Democrat said as she met staff.
“These attacks against an individual’s right to make decisions about their own body are outrageous,” said Harris, who is the first female, Black and South Asian vice president in US history.
According to BBC, a co-executive director of the anti-abortion group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life said the visit “showed the Biden administration’s full-blown devotion to extreme abortion policies”.
The visit to the clinic marks the first ever by a president or vice president pointing the most dramatic push by President Joe Biden’s election campaign to make access to abortion a defining issue in the 2024 election.
Twenty-one states brought in full or partial abortion bans since the Supreme Court decision, while some Republicans are pushing for a nationwide ban.
Harris called those who oppose abortion “extremists.”
The clinic’s employees, she said, had “dedicated their lives to the profession of providing health care in a safe place that gives people dignity.” During her visit Thursday, Harris was joined by Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as well as Congresswoman Betty McCollum.
This was Harris’ sixth stop in her ‘Fight for Reproductive Freedoms’ tour which kicked off in Wisconsin to mark the 51st anniversary of Roe in January.
Meanwhile, the anti-abortion organization SBA Pro-Life America slammed the vice president ahead of her visit saying Harris spent her ‘whole career in the pocket of Big Abortion.’
Minnesota is one of multiple blue states that moved to strengthen abortion rights.
The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed access to abortion for all Americans, was overturned, and the White House has drawn attention to the decline in reproductive rights in the country.
Despite being a devoted Catholic, Biden has been steadfast in his support of abortion access during his time as president.
Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in another high-profile case in the abortion fight.
