First lady Jill Biden speaks at a Women for Biden Harris event at Millersville University June 23, 2024 (Capital-Star photo)

MILLERSVILLE — The Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago “drew new blood from wounds that had healed,” first lady Jill Biden said Sunday at a Women for Biden-Harris event  in Lancaster County. 

“We are still fighting the battles that were settled so many decades ago,” Biden said during brief remarks at  Millersville University. “We are the first generation to give our daughters fewer rights than we had. Radical Republicans are sacrificing the health and the freedom and the futures of women in the name of their political agenda, and that’s why we’re here today.” 

The first lady once again laid the blame for overturning Roe v. Wade at the feet of former President Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of Dobbs. She said if President Joe Biden is reelected, he would strengthen access to reproductive health care and fight for a national law that would restore Roe’s protections, including access to in-vitro fertilization and access to contraception.

Biden told the story of her high school friend who became pregnant as a teenager and had to get a psychiatric evaluation declaring her mentally unfit before the doctor would provide the procedure to end her pregnancy. After having the abortion, her friend couldn’t go home, Biden said. She asked her mother if the friend could stay with them. 

“And my mom didn’t hesitate,” Biden said. She and her mother never spoke about it afterward and her mother never told anyone.

“Secrecy, shame, silence, danger, even death: That’s what defined that time for so many women,” Biden said. “And we are being shamed back into that silence again, 50 years later, we are still fighting the battles that were settled so many decades ago. 

Biden was introduced by Lancaster OB-GYN Dr. Sharee Livingston, who told the Capital-Star she sees first hand the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade. “I’m talking to patients every day who are fearful,” Richardson said. “I’m here to push for any legislation that improves care for all birthing women, but specifically marginalized women.”

Trump, who campaigned in Philadelphia on Saturday, has boasted about his Supreme Court nominees, but has presented conflicting positions on abortion in 2024.  Before arriving in Philadelphia, Trump spoke at the conservative Christian Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 2024 Road to Majority conference in Washington, D.C, and reiterated his position that abortion laws should be left up to states. 

“The people will decide, and that’s the way it should be,” Trump said in D.C. on Saturday. He’s previously said he supports exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and the life of the pregnant patient, and earlier on the campaign trail had said he would support a 16-week nationwide ban.

The first lady said Sunday that Trump had underestimated women’s power — and their anger — over Roe v. Wade being overturned. 

“He sees us working late shifts and making grocery lists, driving to soccer practices and volunteering, caring for our parents and raising money for those in need, and he thinks we can be ignored,” she said, to boos from the audience. “He doesn’t know that when our bodies are on the line, when our daughter’s futures are at stake, we are immovable and we are unstoppable.”

Recent polling has Trump with a slight lead over Biden in Pennsylvania. The most recent poll from Emerson College shows in a head-to-head matchup between Trump and Biden, Trump leads 51% to 49%. When factoring in potential third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West, Emerson’s poll showed Trump’s margin over Biden widening, 45% to 42%, with Kennedy taking 5%. 

Kennedy filed the required signatures to appear on Pennsylvania’s ballot late last week, but is likely to face challenges before the August deadline. 

In the 2020 election, Biden beat Trump by just over 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania. But Trump won Lancaster County in that election, 57% to Biden’s 41%.  Trump’s margin of victory in Lancaster County was even higher in 2016, when he beat Hillary Clinton 57% to 38%

The rally in Lancaster County was one of several stops the first lady made in Pennsylvania on Sunday. She’s been a frequent visitor to the state during the campaign, most recently making a surprise appearance at a Pride celebration in Pittsburgh on June 1, and delivering the keynote speech at Erie County Community College’s commencement that same day. 

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