In their first joint appearance of the 2024 campaign, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are holding an abortion rights rally in Virginia on Tuesday, highlighting how they plan to make access a main message ahead of a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump.
Biden will address what he'll call the "devastating impacts" of the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade, how women voters have backed abortion rights in recent votes, and actions his administration has taken since then to protect access, his campaign said.
In a sign Harris will continue to take a leading role, the campaign said she will blast "MAGA Republican attacks on our reproductive freedoms." Biden and Harris will be joined by their spouses, who will also speak at the rally.
President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting with his reproductive rights task force to mark the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, in the State Dining Room of the White House, on Jan...Show more ---Show more
Evan Vucci/AP
MORE: Biden administration announces new steps to protect contraceptives, abortion medication on Roe anniversary
The rally, on the same day as the New Hampshire GOP primary, is part of a larger effort to mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Harris kicked off her "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour in battleground Wisconsin on Monday, where she blasted Trump, without mentioning his name.
"The former president hand-picked three Supreme Court justices because he intended for them to overturn Roe. He intended for them to take your freedoms. And it is a decision he brags about," she said, quoting him from the campaign trail.
During a Fox News town hall in Iowa earlier this month, Trump said, "For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it, and I'm proud to have done it" – a line the Biden campaign has repeatedly quoted in fundraising pitches since.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 7, on Jan. 22, 2024, in Big Bend, Wis.
Morry Gash/AP
MORE: Fighting for their lives: Women and the impact of abortion restrictions in post-Roe America
"The bottom line is, to truly protect reproductive freedoms, we must restore the protections of Roe because, you see, what the United States Supreme Court took, Congress can put back in place," Harris said Monday, although the task of codifying Roe would require a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate. "And when Congress passes along that puts back the protections of Roe, Joe Biden will sign it."
On Monday, the Biden campaign deployed surrogates in Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, to stress their message opposing abortion bans and the former president.
MORE: Trump boasts of role ending Roe v. Wade, says abortion bans must have 'concessions'
Biden and Harris are also battering Trump on the airwaves, rolling out a new TV ad that features a Texas mother who their campaign said had to go out of state to get an abortion to save her life.
“I never thought I would need an abortion for a planned pregnancy,” Austin Dennard, a Dallas-area OB-GYN, said. “But, I did.”
Dennard said she “desperately wanted” that baby, but was told during a routine doctor’s visit that the fetus had no chance of surviving. She blames Trump for having to leave her state for what she said was a potentially life-saving procedure.
“In Texas, you are forced to carry that pregnancy and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade,” Dennard said in the ad. “The choice was completely taken away. I was to continue my pregnancy, putting my life at risk.”
It was an ordeal, Dennard said, that is “every woman’s worst nightmare.”
Speaking before a meeting of his Reproductive Healthcare Access task force on Monday, Biden criticized “extreme Republicans” who he said have put American lives at risk under abortion bans. He highlighted what he called the "cruel reality" of those restrictions after announcing modest new steps intended to expand access to abortion care.
“Folks, this is what it looks like when the right to privacy is under attack. These extreme laws have no place -- no place -- in the United States of America," Biden said, calling them "outrageous."
The president warned about several proposals by Republicans in Congress that would ban abortion at the federal level, and once again, like Harris, called on Congress to codify abortion rights, even though Democrats do not have the votes to pass a bill that would enshrine those protections.
“Stop playing politics with a woman's life and freedom. Let doctors do their job," he said.
A December Reuters/ Ipsos poll found that about 50% of Americans would support a law legalizing abortion nationwide with nearly-one of that number being Republicans When asked if protecting abortion access will influence their vote in November, nearly 70% of Americans said it is an important issue.
Despite the campaign’s urgency to push abortion to the head of their platform some members of Biden’s own party are sounding the alarm that more needs to be done.
Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a key surrogate for the Biden campaign, told the CBS program "Face the Nation" that Biden needs to use more “blunt language” to let voters know what’s at stake in the upcoming election.
"I think people want to know that this is a president that is fighting. And I think he has said that. To use maybe more, you know, blunt language, maybe that would be helpful," said Whitmer.
She also said Biden should talk about abortion more.
"I think it would be good if he did. I know that one tenet of his belief system is that women and only women at- with their families and healthcare professionals are the ones who know what decision is right for them," Whitmer said. "And that he is fighting and going to continue to fight to make sure that that is squarely the ability of an American woman to make that decision."
In just the first year since the Supreme Court overruled its Roe. v. Wade decision, more than a dozen states banned nearly all abortion procedures. But in every referendum on the issue since the court’s decision voters have resoundingly voted in favor of abortion rights.
Harris took a victory lap in November the day after Ohio voted for constitutional protections for abortion access, answering reporters’ questions in the White House driveway.
“Last night, I think the American people made clear that they are prepared to stand for freedom and for the individual freedoms and the promise of freedom in America and by extension, was a good night for democracy,” Harris said then.
"I think that if you look at from the midterms to last night, from California to Kansas, Ohio to Virginia, the voters said, 'look, the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,'" she said added. "And so it was a good night and the president and I obviously have a lot of work to do to earn our reelection, but I'm confident we're gonna win."
ABC News' Mary Bruce speaks with Vice President Kamala Harris.
ABC News
MORE: ABC News gets rare access to VP Kamala Harris as she hits the 2024 campaign trail
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked the vice president in an exclusive interview last week, "What can you realistically promise the American people you would do to protect these reproductive rights?”
"Well, we're gonna continue to do what we've been doing,” Harris said. “And so that includes what we're doing through the court system, what we're doing to ensure emergency care and protection for all people in terms of access to emergency care, what we're doing to protect access to contraception is another big piece of this.”
In a memo to supporters on Friday, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said the campaign will continue to hammer Trump until Election Day in hopes of repeating Democrats’ recent victories on abortion.
“With all this in mind, the Biden-Harris Campaign will be spending the next ten months highlighting the impact that Donald Trump’s abortion bans in the states are having on women and providers and reminding voters exactly what is at stake for reproductive freedom in 2024,” Rodriguez wrote.