By Joseph Green-Bishop
Texas Metro News Correspondent
On the home turf of one of the most conservative state legislatures in the country, Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday urged supporters of abortion rights to pursue a federal law making the procedure a constitutional right.
“The right of every woman in every state to make decisions about her own body is on the line,” said the Vice President, speaking in Tallahassee, FL. “We will fight and we will not back down. We know this fight will not be won until we secure this right for every American.”
The 1973 Roe V. Wade Supreme Court decision made abortion constitutionally permissible. In June of this year the Supreme Court ruled that Roe had been incorrectly decided. Since the decision, several state legislatures have passed stringent abortion bans. The Republican controlled Florida legislature is now considering a 12-week ban. Harris spoke on the 50th anniversary of the Roe decision.
The number of legal pregnancy terminations in Texas declined from a few thousand per month to less than 10 monthly after state legislators imposed restrictions in the summer of last year. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe, Texas barred a woman who was more than six weeks pregnant from having an abortion, according to researchers at the University of Texas in Austin.
The vice president characterized those who wanted to place restrictions on a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy “extreme.” She also criticized Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, for his position against abortion rights.
Vice President Harris told the abortion rights activists that President Biden had instructed federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, to support women who seek the drug mifepristone which is used to terminate unwanted pregnancies. She said that the administration would continue to oppose any effort to pass national anti-abortion legislation.
“ We are on the right side of history,” the vice president said, noting that a recent Pew Research Center poll found that nearly sixty percent of all Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.
