TAMPA, Fla. (AP) 鈥� on Tuesday blamed Donald Trump for Florida’s upcoming abortion ban and other restrictions across the country that have to care for pregnant women, arguing Trump has created a 鈥渉ealthcare crisis for women all over this country.鈥�
Biden’s campaign events at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa placed the president in the epicenter . The state鈥檚 six-week abortion ban is poised to go into effect May 1 at the same time that that would enshrine abortion rights in the state鈥檚 constitution. Biden said that millions of women are facing 鈥減ain and cruelty.”
鈥淏ut it鈥檚 not inevitable. We can stop it. When you vote, we can stop it,” he said.
The president is seeking to capitalize on the unceasing momentum against to not only buoy his reelection bid in battleground states he won in 2020, but also to go on the offensive against Trump in states that the presumptive Republican nominee won four years ago. , where Biden lost to Trump by 3.3 percentage points.
On Tuesday, he chronicled increasing medical concerns for women in the two years since the Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections.
鈥淭here was one person who was responsible for this nightmare,” Biden said. 鈥淎nd he鈥檚 acknowledged it and he brags about it 鈥� .鈥�
Biden said Trump, who has publicly waffled on his abortion views, and of late has said , is concerned voters will now hold him accountable.
鈥淔olks, the bad news for Trump is that we are going to hold him accountable,鈥� Biden said.
At the same time, advocates on the ground say support for abortion access cuts across parties. They’re intent on making the issue as nonpartisan as possible as they work to scrounge up at least 60% support from voters for the ballot initiative.
That could mean in some cases, Florida voters would split their tickets, backing GOP candidates while supporting the abortion measure.
鈥淚 think that normal people are aware that a candidate campaign is really different than a ballot initiative,鈥� said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, which gathered signatures to put the abortion question before voters. 鈥淵ou can vote for your preferred candidate of any political party and still not agree with them on every single issue.”
Brenzel continued, 鈥淭his gives voters an opportunity to have their message heard on one policy platform.鈥�
On the same day the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the ballot measure could go before voters, it also upheld the state鈥檚 15-week abortion ban. That subsequently cleared the way for the new ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, which is often before women know they are pregnant, to go into effect next week.
Organizers of the abortion ballot measure say they collected nearly 1.5 million signatures to put the issue before voters, although the state stopped counting at just under a million. Roughly 891,500 signatures were required. Of the total number of signatures, about 35% were from either registered Republican voters or those not affiliated with a party, organizers said.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat, said if the abortion ballot initiative becomes branded as a partisan effort, 鈥渋t just makes it more challenging to reach 60%.鈥� Eskamani, who worked at Planned Parenthood before running for political office, said she is encouraging the Biden administration to focus broadly on the impact of a six-week ban and let the ballot measure speak for itself.
鈥淎t the end of the day, the ballot initiative is going to be a multimillion-dollar campaign that stands very strongly on its own,鈥� Eskamani said.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a question on whether the former president, a Florida voter, would oppose or support the ballot measure. In an NBC interview last September, Trump called Florida鈥檚 six-week ban 鈥渢errible.鈥� But he has repeatedly highlighted the three conservative-leaning justices he chose for the high court who cleared the way to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
Republicans were dismissive of the Biden campaign and the broader Democratic Party鈥檚 efforts to use abortion as a political cudgel, arguing that other issues will matter more with voters in November.
鈥淏iden must have forgotten that thousands of Americans have fled from extremist Democrat policies to prosperous and pro-life states like Florida,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley.
Still, Trump and other Republicans are aware that voter backlash against increasing restrictions could be a serious liability this fall.
Abortion-rights supporters have won every time the issue has been put before voters, including in solidly conservative states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio. Last month, a flipped the seat from Republican control by campaigning on abortion rights, weeks after in vitro fertilization services had been paused in the state.
Nikki Fried, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said Florida will be a competitive state on the presidential level 鈥渂ecause of the extremism that has come out of Florida.鈥� No Democrat has won the state on the presidential level since 2012, but state party officials have found some glimmers of political change in vastly smaller races, such as the last May that saw a Democrat win in what was once a solidly Republican city.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said at a news conference before the visit that the abortion amendment was written in a way to deliberately mislead voters, an argument that the state Supreme Court disagreed with when it approved the ballot language.
鈥淎ll I can tell you is Floridians are not buying what Joe Biden is selling and in November we鈥檙e going to play an instrumental role in sending him back to Delaware where he belongs,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.
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