Harris and Biden both blame Trump on abortion. How they do it is very different.

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had the same basic message about Florida’s six-week abortion ban that started Wednesday: It’s Donald Trump’s fault.

But that’s where the similarities between the two ended when it came to stumping on abortion in the adopted home state of their Republican rival.

During his speech in Tampa last week, Biden used the word “abortion” twice. Harris used it 15 times on Wednesday in Jacksonville, sometimes coupled with the “Trump abortion bans” phrase she coined as she crisscrossed the country speaking out about the issue.

Biden, before turning to abortion rights, detoured into other topics important to Floridians, including Medicare and Social Security, and then talked about how he wanted to make community college free. Harris, meanwhile, devoted the entirety of her speech in Florida to abortion.

The two speeches, delivered eight days apart, underscored Biden and Harris’ diverging approaches and comfort levels in talking about abortion, an issue Democrats all across the country are campaigning on while Republicans, who have been vulnerable on the issue, focus on immigration and the economy, which are top concerns for voters.

Some abortion-rights advocates have shared a level of frustration with Biden’s seeming reluctance to say the word “abortion” when talking about reproductive access. They often point to prepared remarks for his State of the Union speech that had the word “abortion” in it, but when he said the remarks aloud, it was nowhere to be found.

For Harris, Wednesday marked her fourth speech on abortion rights in just a month, and her 12th trip to Florida as vice president. Music from the “Triple Threat” marching band at Edward Waters University played ahead of the program, as dancing troupes performed alongside wearing animal print and sequins.

Harris paused often during her speech for effect, applause, or for the audience to join in and finish her sentences. She opened up in deeply personal ways, talking about how politicians who set abortion restrictions don’t understand how a woman’s body works and sharing that her path to becoming a prosecutor started when she was young and she learned her best friend was being molested by her father.

“Up and down the ballot, reproductive freedom is on the ballot,” Harris said. “And you, the leaders, you the people, have the power to protect it with your vote. Donald Trump may think he can take Florida for granted. It is your power that will send Joe Biden and me back to the White House.”

Those in the abortion-rights community have praised the administration for its policies. But while they view Harris as a fellow traveler and effective advocate, some are still pushing Biden to speak out more regularly — and more comfortably — about defending abortion rights.

“Actions definitely speak louder than words, but words set the tone,” one former senior 2020 Biden campaign aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. “But you are the most powerful man in the world. For you to be comfortable, it allows for other people to be more comfortable with saying the word ‘abortion.’”

Campaign aides — and other prominent abortion rights advocates — argue that Harris is leading on the issue for the reelection effort and bristle at the idea that the president has been ineffective and needs to be doing the exact same things she is.

“The real contrast to me is between the presumed Republican nominee and the Democratic ticket,” said Christina Reynolds, spokesperson for EMILY's List, an organization that promotes women for office who support abortion rights. “That’s the contrast … We know what the Biden administration has done. They have been looking to protect abortion rights with every lever of government. In every way they can, they have made it a fundamental part of this campaign.”

They also point to Biden’s record, leaning into the fact that while the lifelong Catholic may not always say what the advocates want him to say, he is pushing for more abortion access.

Biden, 81, has gone further on the issue than his Democratic predecessors. He has urged Congress to send him a bill enshrining abortion rights into federal law, and his administration made medication abortion more available through the mail, allowed veterans to receive abortion counseling and allowed service members to travel for abortions.

Biden advisers said they were confident in both Biden and Harris’ messaging and approach to abortion. "Politico choosing to focus on how many times abortion was said in a speech is decidedly not the takeaway for the millions of Florida women who were stripped today of their right to make their own health care decisions,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, Biden campaign Florida state director.

The Biden-Harris campaign dropped into Florida at a time when the state has lost its battleground status. While both visited Democratic-majority counties, Trump is leading Biden statewide here by double digits, and Republicans continue to out-register Democrats — now by more than 900,000 voters.

Harris had also visited Tallahassee in January 2023 on what would have been the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s now-overturned Roe V. Wade decision. And the timing of her visit to Florida on Wednesday coincided with the same day Florida’s six-week abortion restriction took effect.

“I wish we were celebrating today. Unfortunately, we are not. Today, pregnant women in Florida are less safe and less in control of their own health and their own future than they were yesterday,” Democratic Mayor Donna Deegan of Jacksonville said, her voice breaking.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the six-week restriction in 2023 as he prepared for the Republican presidential campaign, where he ran to the right of Trump on policy.

Trump criticized DeSantis, who was his rival at the time, saying he thought the restriction was “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” In a video in early April, Trump said that the legality of abortion would be left to the states.

In a Time Magazine cover story that ran Tuesday, however, Trump indicated that if elected president he wouldn’t get in the way of states’ monitoring women’s pregnancies and wouldn't commit to vetoing a federal abortion restriction. Harris seized on the interview Wednesday, saying “the contrast in this election could not be more clear.”

The Trump campaign disputed her characterization. “President Trump has consistently said these decisions are best made at the state level where people have the best opportunity to make their voices heard,” said Trump campaign adviser Brian Hughes. He also pointed to numerous other topics that didn’t come up during Harris’ speech, including illegal immigration, high prices for housing, gas and groceries, and protests on college campuses.

Biden has evolved on some of the details of his abortion rights stance in his nearly five decades in public office. During his 2020 presidential campaign, for instance, Biden initially went back and forth regarding the Hyde Amendment, a spending rider that has been on the books for decades and prevents federal dollars from paying for abortion, with limited exceptions. He ultimately opposed it during the campaign and his proposed budgets as president have excluded it, although it remains in effect.

Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health ruling overturning Roe, Harris has been on the road doing events about abortion rights and access. She previously did official administration events with round tables of women and doctors who’ve been affected by the new state of reproductive access.

Last month, she and her team changed strategy, with a stronger focus on campaign events, largely so Harris could more directly attack Trump by name and use calls to action to get people to register to vote or sign on to efforts to get abortion referendums on the ballot.

Harris, aides say, sees it as her responsibility to keep Trump from attempting to shake off any of the blowback from abortion restrictions being enacted in states across the country.

“As soon as this turned into a general election moment, [she knew] he was going to try and weasel his way out of his prior positions and abandon the Christian conservative folks that got him there, to try and capture that middle swing voter, and she saw it coming,” one senior Harris aide said.