Kamala Harris To Campaign In Texas, Highlight State’s Abortion Ban

Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Texas on Friday for an attention-grabbing campaign event highlighting reproductive freedom in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Texas is not a swing state, but it enacted one of the country’s strictest abortion bans after Supreme Court justices nominated by Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the federal right to abortion.

The Democratic presidential nominee will speak at an event alongside Texas women who have had to navigate the state’s abortion ban, according to a senior Harris campaign official. Rep. Colin Allred (D), who is within striking distance of Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in polls of the Texas Senate race, will join Harris as well.

The Texas trip comes as Trump, GOP nominee, also campaigns in noncompetitive states, such as New York and California, and engages in high-profile stunts, like working the fryer at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s.

While in Texas, the campaign official said, Harris will sit down for an interview with podcaster Brené Brown.

Opposition to abortion bans has fueled Democratic victories in special elections and helped stave off a “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections. Democrats up and down the ballot have maintained an intense focus on reproductive freedom, while Republicans have sought to deflect from the issue with transgender scaremongering. Abortion has fueled a gender gap in polling that shows Harris ahead among women by double-digit margins.

Harris has previously appeared with Kate Cox, a Texas woman who was forced to travel out of state for abortion care after complications from a wanted pregnancy threatened her health. Cox announced at a Harris rally in June that she was pregnant again thanks to the abortion care she received outside of Texas.

Cox was one of more than 35,000 women who traveled outside Texas for abortion care in 2023, according to an estimate by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.