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 in Houston 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 scaremongering about transgender people. Abortion has fueled a gender gap in polling that shows Harris ahead among women by double-digit margins.
“I look at what happened in the midterms and in special elections to guide my thinking about this issue,” Harris told reporters Monday in Michigan before the Texas trip had been announced. “And what we saw is, in so-called ‘red’ states and so-called ‘blue’ states, when the issue of the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body is on the ballot, the American people vote for freedom regardless of the party with which they’re registered to vote.”
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.
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In a statement that did not mention Harris, Allred, who is hoping to outperform the Democratic presidential nominee in the state for a surprise upset against Cruz, praised the Texas women who have spoke out about abortion.
“What women in Texas are facing every day under Ted Cruz’s abortion ban is unacceptable,” Allred said in a statement from his campaign. “Texas women deserve to have their voices heard. I am glad these brave Texas women will have a platform to tell their stories.”
The Cruz campaign has sought to tie Allred to Harris and accused them of working “hand-in-hand” to allow boys in girls sports and “dangerous illegal aliens” into the country.
“Colin and Kamala share an agenda, and now they’ll share a stage for all Texans to see,” a campaign spokesperson said.