The Republican former congresswoman, long opposed to abortion rights, suggested as she campaigned with Vice President Kamala Harris that G.O.P. restrictions had gone overboard.
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Vice President Kamala Harris with Liz Cheney at a campaign event on Monday in Malvern, Pa. Ms. Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman, has endorsed Ms. Harris and is campaigning with her in battleground states.
Former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming on Monday sought to give voters who oppose abortion rights explicit permission to support Vice President Kamala Harris, suggesting during a town-hall-style event with Ms. Harris that Republican restrictions on abortion rights had gone too far.
Ms. Cheney’s remarks at the campaign event in Malvern, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb, were notable because Ms. Harris is making a concerted pitch to Republican women in the suburbs. Many of them have spent years voting for candidates opposed to abortion rights, as Ms. Cheney was during her career in Congress.
Now, Ms. Cheney, a vocal critic of former President Donald J. Trump, is telling these women that they can back Ms. Harris with a clean conscience. And her words may carry some weight: In Congress, Ms. Cheney had an A rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that scores members based on their opposition to abortion. She lost her 2022 race for re-election to a pro-Trump primary challenger two months after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
“I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life but who have watched what’s going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need,” Ms. Cheney said. “In places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing, is suing, to get access to women’s medical records. That’s not sustainable for us as a country, and it has to change.”
The Harris-Cheney event was the first of three planned stops on Monday for the two women in suburban counties of the “blue wall” battleground states that are crucial to Ms. Harris’s chances. They were scheduled to appear together later in the Detroit and Milwaukee areas.
With very few voters left undecided and polls showing the race essentially tied, the Harris campaign is zeroing in on suburban women, particularly moderate Republicans. Her aides believe these women can be cleaved away from Mr. Trump in sufficient numbers to give Ms. Harris narrow victories in key states.
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Source: nytimes.com
