Cairo: Hani Kamal El-Din
In a meeting with her staff last week, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a prediction: Former President Donald Trump would not support a national abortion ban. Instead, she said, he would take a position that would muddy the waters on an issue she believed could be deeply damaging to her campaign.
We have to hold him responsible for this, he told his aides.
Vice President Kamala Harris has identified abortion as the issue to press in Arizona.Credit: AP
Days later, as rumors circulated that a court ruling on Arizona’s abortion ban was looming, Harris ordered that an event in Tucson, Arizona, on student loans should instead focus on abortion rights, according to three Democratic officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
On Tuesday, Arizona’s high court upheld an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions. And on Friday, before more than 100 abortion rights activists and supporters, Harris planned to deliver a simple message: blame Donald Trump.