(States Newsroom) — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris appeared alongside superstar performer Beyoncé on Friday night to encourage voter turnout and reinforce the differences between the two parties on reproductive rights, with just days to go before voting ends.
The rally at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston, Texas, followed months of speculation about whether Beyoncé would support Vice President Harris publicly ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. The two-hour event featured other celebrities, including Willie Nelson and Jessica Alba, as well as women detailing being denied medical care for pregnancy complications in Texas after its abortion ban went into effect.
Beyoncé, who has won more than 30 Grammy Awards as well as hundreds of others throughout her career, said casting a vote is “one of the most valuable tools” that Americans have to decide the future of the country.
“We are at the precipice of an incredible shift, the brink of history,” Beyoncé said, adding that she wasn’t speaking at the rally as a celebrity or a politician.
“I’m here as a mother,” she said. “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”
‘Horrific reality’
Harris, who is locked in an extremely close race with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, said abortion bans and restrictions implemented during the last two years have been “devastating.”
“We see the horrific reality that women and families face every single day,” Harris said. “The stories are vivid, they are difficult to hear, they are difficult to tell.”
Harris said there are also many stories that women and their families won’t discuss in public about challenges they’ve faced with access to medical care during pregnancy complications.
“An untold number of women and the people who love them, who are silently suffering — women who are being made to feel as though they did something wrong, as though they are criminals, as though they are alone,” Harris said. “And to those women. I say — and I think I speak on behalf of all of us — we see you and we are here with you.”
Harris said if voters give Trump another four years in the Oval Office, he will likely nominate more justices to the Supreme Court, which she argued would have a negative impact on the country.
“If he were reelected, he’d probably get to appoint one, if not two, members to the United States Supreme Court,” Harris said. “At which point Donald Trump will have packed the court with five out of nine justices … who will sit for lifetime appointments; shaping your lives and the lives of generations to come.”
Texas has one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws, which has led to concerns about its OB-GYN workforce, how the state addresses maternal mortality and testimony before Congress about women having to leave the state to get care for pregnancy complications.
Texas is also where anti-abortion organizations decided to file a federal lawsuit in November 2022 challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of medication abortion.
The two-drug regimen, consisting of mifepristone and misoprostol, is currently approved for up to 10 weeks gestation and is used in about 63% of abortions nationwide, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.
The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled earlier this year the organizations lacked standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place, but the justices didn’t address the merits of the anti-abortion groups’ arguments.
Speaking at ‘ground zero’
Harris told reporters on Friday before the rally began that Republican lawmakers in Texas have made the state “ground zero in this fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body.”
Harris contended that access to reproductive rights, including abortion, is “not just a political debate” or “some theoretical concept.”
“Real harm has occurred in this country, real suffering has occurred,” Harris told reporters. “People die, and it is important to highlight this issue because this is among the most critical issues that the American people will address when they vote for who will be the next president of the United States.”
During Trump’s first term in office, he nominated three Supreme Court justices, who later joined with other conservatives to overturn the constitutional right to abortion established in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.
The Supreme Court’s ruling two years ago sent “the authority to regulate abortion … to the people and their elected representatives.”
That has led to a hodgepodge of laws with 13 states banning abortion, six states restricting access between six and 12 weeks, five states setting a gestational limit between 15 and 22 weeks, 17 states restricting abortion access after viability and nine states not setting a gestational limit, according to KFF.
Polls find support for abortion access
Public support for abortion access has outpaced support for restricting access for decades, according to consistent polling from the Pew Research Center.
The most recent survey from May shows that about 63% of Americans want abortion to be legal in most or all cases, while 36% said they believe it should be illegal in most or all cases.
Additional surveying from Pew shows that 67% of Harris supporters believe abortion access is “very important — nearly double the share of Biden voters who said this four years ago, though somewhat lower than the share of midterm Democratic voters who said this in 2022 (74%).
“And about a third of Trump supporters (35%) now say abortion is very important to their vote — 11 points lower than in 2020.”
In addition to playing some role in the presidential election, voters in 10 states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota — will weigh in on abortion access directly through ballot questions.
Congress could supersede any protections or restrictions on abortion access established within states, if the House and Senate ever agree on legislation and a future president signs it into law.
Republicans are slightly favored to gain control of the Senate for the next two years following the election, while control of the House is considered a toss-up, as is the presidential race.
