Editor’s Note: Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly are must-read authors this election cycle.

Abortion faded from the spotlight. Harris is trying to bring it back

Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein for Politico

Democrats for the last month have been too busy fighting over whether President Joe Biden should lead the ticket to keep voters’ attention on abortion. Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to bring the focus back.

On Monday, Harris told campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware, that she would prevent Republicans from enacting a national ban because “the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” On Tuesday, she concluded a rally in a Milwaukee suburb by promising to sign legislation that would “restore reproductive freedoms.” And on Wednesday, the Harris campaign said it plans to counter former President Donald Trump’s rally in Charlotte with an abortion-focused event in North Carolina featuring Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky woman who was raped by her stepfather when she was 12.

Democrats have made abortion rights a cornerstone of the 2024 campaign, but Biden’s disastrous debate and a month’s worth of questions over whether his campaign could continue sidelined the issue that the party has used to boost their electoral prospects since Roe v. Wade was overturned two years ago.

As Harris begins to delineate herself as a presumptive presidential nominee rather than Biden’s running mate, she is leaning into abortion to mobilize voters as she builds out the rest of her policy platform.

Recommend reading the rest of the article at Politico at this link.