Biden campaign sharpens its attacks on Trump over abortion restrictions amid Texas case

By Betsy Klein, CNN

Washington (CNN) — The Biden campaign is sharpening its efforts to call out former President Donald Trump for what it casts as “chaos and cruelty” on the issue of abortion as women across the country grapple with a patchwork of tightening restrictions.

The crux of their message: “Donald Trump is to blame.”

The messaging push comes one day after the Texas Supreme Court ruled against Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, who filed a lawsuit last week to end a pregnancy that she and her doctors say threatens her life and future fertility. The lawsuit is believed to be one of the first attempts in the country by an individual seeking a court-ordered abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

Monday’s ruling, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a call with reporters, is the “latest development in the shocking, horrifying and heartbreaking story,” seeking to tie the case directly to Trump’s policies. She noted that Cox’s doctors “were threatened with a lifetime in jail sentence by Donald Trump’s-endorsed MAGA Republican (Texas Attorney General) Ken Paxton.” Cox eventually left the state to seek an abortion before the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling.

Campaign officials view abortion as a key galvanizing issue for general election voters heading into 2024 – and one where they have the upper hand, pointing to turnout and enthusiasm among Democratic voters in the 2022 midterm elections, as well as statewide races in 2023.

They have work to do: A national Wall Street Journal poll out last week found that Trump narrowly leads Biden in a hypothetical 2024 presidential rematch, with Biden weighed down by relatively soft support among “disaffected Democrats.” Forty-seven percent of registered voters in the US currently say they’d support Trump and 43% say they’d support Biden. Abortion is one of the issues where the campaign feels it can boost that Democratic enthusiasm and court independent voters.

The campaign has been homing in on the former president, who remains the GOP primary front-runner. But it is also preparing messaging for other candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former US Ambassador to the UN and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, casting them as “extreme,” as well.

As the campaign begins to highlight more contrasts with Trump, it will continue efforts to amplify the politically potent issue, with communications director Michael Tyler telling CNN it will be a “central pillar of the campaign moving forward” compared to Trump’s “unpopular and toxic agenda.”

“We will make sure that the American people know that Donald Trump is to blame,” Tyler said.

He added, “If Trump is reelected, we will face the reality of a nightmare scenario – and that’s a national abortion ban.”

CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the Biden team’s plans.

Those plans include outreach to the “Women for Biden” coalition, as well as the use of key surrogates on the issue. But the campaign also feels that stories of real people, like Kate Cox, are resonating.

“It’s critical that we continue to lift up these stories and really remind women what’s at stake in this election, and really the choice that they have before them,” Chavez Rodriguez said.

In Texas, Cox’s attorneys with the Center for Reproductive Rights announced Monday she had left her state to undergo an abortion.

“Kate had to leave her home state to seek the health care she urgently needs. This is happening right here in the United States of America. And it’s happening because of Donald Trump,” Chavez Rodriguez said.

She noted that “Trump proudly brags to this day, it was his Supreme Court picks who provided the deciding votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, allowing Republican extremists across the country to pass draconian bans that are hurting women and threatening doctors.”

Chavez Rodriguez pointed to other states where the “chaos and cruelty created by Trump’s work overturning Roe v. Wade continues to worsen all across the country,” including legislation banning abortion with few exceptions in Florida and Alabama, as well as recently-introduced bill in Missouri, where, she said, “MAGA Republicans introduced a bill to charge women with murder for receiving reproductive care.”

Trump and other Republicans running for president, she warned, want “to ban abortion nationwide.”

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