While speaking to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Vice President Kamala Harris got real and explained what living in a state with a Trump abortion ban means for working mothers.
Harris said:
You guys may have heard the story. Many here about the stories about the horrendous things that happened. Most recent stories about what happened in Georgia. Many of these Trump abortion bans that make no exception for rape or incest. It’s immoral. It’s immoral. And today, 40 percent of Latinas in America live in a state with a Trump abortion ban.
So imagine if she is a working woman. Understand that the majority of women who seek abortion care are mothers. Understand what that means for her. So, she’s gotta now travel to another state. God help her that she has some extra money to pay for that plane ticket. She’s gotta figure out what to do with her kids.
God help her if she has affordable child care. Imagine what that means. She has to leave her home to go to a Airport, stand in a TSA line. Like, think about this, you know, everybody here is, is, you’re policy leaders. I always say to my team, especially the young people I mentor, on any public policy, you have to ask, how is this going to affect a real person?
Ask how it would affect a real person. Go through the details. So she’s got to stand in a TSA line. To get on a plane sitting next to a perfect stranger. Going to a city where she’s never been. That’s it. to go and receive a medical procedure. She’s gonna have to get right back to the airport because she gotta get back to those kids.
And it’s not like her best friend can go with her because the best friend is probably taking care of the kids. All because these people have decided they’re in a better position to tell her what’s in her best interest than she is to know. It’s just simply wrong. And I think we all know one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do.
If she chooses,
If she chooses, she will talk with her priest, her pastor, her rabbi, her imam, but not the government telling her what to do. And I pledge to you, When CHC helps pass a law to restore reproductive freedoms as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.
Video:
Kamala Harris explains point by point what a working class mother would have to go through point by point to get reproductive care in a state with a Trump abortion ban. pic.twitter.com/KwJAFbUbWy
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) September 18, 2024
To people like Donald Trump and most men reproductive care is an abstract policy issue, but it is not. Cutting off access to reproductive care in a state imposes a series of hurdles which VP Harris explained as more than just letting the states decide.
Many women aren’t going to be able to afford the cost in time and/or money of going to another state to get reproductive care, and the point is that it is wrong that they have to.
Women are needlessly dying in the United States right now, and it is wrong.
Whether or not a person lives or dies is not a decision for the states. The government should have no say in what a woman chooses to do with her own body.
It is wrong, and we must vote to make it stop.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
