Shortly after taking the podium at a South Side rally to highlight reproductive rights and generate excitement for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign on Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts warned the audience that she would not mince words.
“Friends, it is time to speak plainly about abortion care as the routine medical care that it is, and, yes, I’m using the ‘A’ word,” she said. In the past, Democratic lawmakers rarely uttered the word abortion, using instead “choice” when discussing the issue. But that’s changing. Harris herself has been using the term abortion. This adjustment is a result of GOP attacks on abortion care, Pressley explained.
“The rhetoric they use is blunt; the policies are violent,” Pressley said to a crowd of supporters at the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers headquarters on South 19th Street. “So I have to speak plainly about this. Abortion care is health care.”
Talking with reporters after the event, Pressley said the GOP is “on path to a national extremist march towards a ban on abortion. Now what is that really? A nation of forced births. What could be more violent than that?”
The maternal mortality rate for Black women is significantly higher than for white women, Pressley added, meaning they are “three to four times more likely to die in birth or post-birth and complications,” making the abortion issue “a matter of life and death.”
Speakers at the event praised Harris for championing abortion rights but spent much of their time launching a series of attacks on former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump, calling him the “architect” of abortion restrictions and bans that conservative lawmakers have implemented in more than 20 states in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe. v. Wade.
Pressley contrasted Trump’s actions with those of Harris, who is expected to focus on abortion and reproductive health care as her campaign ramps up in the coming days and weeks.
Harris “knows that the right to control our own bodies is fundamental and our right to control our own health care is essential,” Pressley said.
Each of the four speakers at the event tied Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, to Project 2025, a plan published by the Heritage Foundation that includes a blueprint for the next Republican president to consolidate executive power and reshape the federal government by enacting right-wing policies. Project 2025 includes a rejection of abortion as health care.
“Even though Trump and Vance are trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, Trump championed a national abortion ban when he was president, and both men have agreed that women should be punished if seeking the health care they need, and we cannot have that,” said Sydney Etheredge, a Pennsylvania reproductive rights advocate.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, who represents Pennsylvania’s 12th District, introduced Pressley and told the crowd the upcoming presidential election will have consequences — and the election result could present opportunities — for all the nation’s citizens. She went on to list, among others, nurses, doctors, queer and trans people, union members and people struggling to pay rent.
“However you show up in society, there is something at stake for you today,” Lee said.
She warned against complacency by recalling her efforts as an organizer during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Ahead of the election, Lee spent hours phoning voters — many, she said, were confident of a Clinton victory. Then came election night.
“We woke up, and there was a Trump presidency,” she said. “Then the wheels were in motion. There are things they have done that will take us generations to undo. Don’t let them have a chance to do more; don’t let them finish the job.”
While speakers often warned of the consequences of a second Trump term, they often pivoted to offer hope for the future. Key to that hopeful future, they said, was a Harris presidency.
“Let us deliver a love letter to future generations and build a truly just America,” Pressley said.
Here are a few comments from some of the other speakers:
“After the Dobbs decision leaked, I found myself at a routine checkup with my physician in Tennessee, when my doctor pulled up a chair, then pulled up a map of the United States on her screen. And she said, ‘Tell me where you’re working and I’ll tell you how to be safe.’”
“For example, she recommended that when I’m traveling for work to Iowa or South Dakota or Wisconsin, I try to stay as close to Minnesota as possible so that in the event I needed emergency medical treatment, I could cross the border and safely get it. Then in June of 2022, it happened. Roe fell. I drained my savings, charged up my credit card and moved to Pennsylvania.”
“I knew I would be able to get the health care that I needed and wanted in Pittsburgh. I literally fled my home of seven years to ensure that I would always be able to safely access the health care that I needed.”
— Brei Erskine, who moved from Nashville to Pittsburgh out of fear that Tennessee would enact abortion and reproductive health restrictions in the wake of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion. Such restrictions could endanger her access to treatment for a potentially life-threatening health issue.
“With Republicans attacking abortion across the country, it is essential that every leader fight for our control of our own bodies. Vice President Harris believes the federal government should not be telling women what they should be doing with their bodies.”
— Sydney Etheredge, a Pennsylvania reproductive rights advocate.
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.