Vice President Kamala Harris is slated to give a speech on abortion rights in Des Moines, Iowa, the same day that more than a dozen Republican presidential candidates descend on the city to attend the Iowa Republican Party's biggest political event of the year.
She will discuss abortion rights in the state with local activists, healthcare providers, and patients, continuing the conversation she started during a roundtable at Grand View University in March.
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A Democratic Party official said Harris's visit wasn't planned specifically to draw attention away from the GOP contenders' visits but just happened to work out that way. Her visit was more so prompted by Iowa's recent passage of a six-week abortion ban. According to the official, the vice president is primarily visiting the state to "center what’s at stake when MAGA Republicans rip away freedoms."
The 2023 Lincoln Day Dinner, hosted in Des Moines by the Iowa GOP, will be attended by Republican presidential candidates former President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), former Vice President Mike Pence, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Larry Elder, Perry Johnson, Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Ryan Binkley, and former Texas Republican Rep. Will Hurd. Each of the candidates will also deliver remarks at the event.
Nearly all the Republican candidates have committed to signing federal abortion limits or acknowledged a federal role in abortion policy.
Earlier this month, the Iowa legislature convened a special session, during which Republican lawmakers passed a six-week abortion ban. The ban was later signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), eliciting praise from some of the 2024 candidates.
The law was blocked soon after its signing by Polk County District Judge Joseph Seidlin. In the ruling, he specified that the Iowa Board of Medicine is permitted to move forward with outlining rules for enforcing the measure.
In response to the court's move, Reynolds said, “The abortion industry’s attempt to thwart the will of Iowans and the voices of their elected representatives continues today" and vowed to take the case to the state's Supreme Court.
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The Democratic National Committee has been emphasizing abortion rights ahead of the 2024 presidential election with the hope that independents, and possibly centrist Republicans, will be put off by a federal abortion ban.
In a recent DNC press call ahead of the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, a Democrat, claimed that abortion bans are unpopular among voters in the state, pointing to recent polling. In May, a Des Moines Register-Mediacom poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of Iowans believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases.