Vice President Kamala Harris criticized former President Trump’s remarks at a rally about protecting Americans, particularly women, from migrant crime ‘whether the women like it or not,’ calling his comment ‘offensive.’ 

Speaking with reporters Thursday morning, Harris said, ‘It’s just, it actually is being very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their rights and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,’ tying his comments on illegal immigration to abortion. 

During his Green Bay, Wisconsin, rally, Trump talked about the southern border under President Biden and Harris. ‘Kamala has imported criminal migrants from prisons and jails, from insane asylums and mental institutions all over the world, from Venezuela to the Congo, including savage criminals to assault, rape and murder our women and girls,’ he said. 

He then discussed conversations with his staff on whether he should profess that he specifically wants to protect women from the consequences of an unsecured border. According to Trump, his advisers suggested it could be inappropriate to say. 

‘I said, well, I’m going to do it. Whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them,’ he told the crowd before being met with cheers. 

‘I’m going to protect them from migrants coming in. I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles, and lots of other things.’

Harris told reporters that ‘this is just the latest in a series of revelations by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency.’

Trump is notably against a federal abortion ban and has emphasized that he wants the issue to remain in the individual states. 

The vice president referred to state-level abortion restrictions as a ‘Trump abortion ban,’ claiming, ‘one in three women live in a Trump abortion ban state and has legal restrictions on the right she rightly should have to make decisions about her own body.’ 

In a 2023 survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the nuance of public sentiment on abortion was revealed in greater detail. While most Americans believed that abortion should be legal to a certain extent, opinions changed drastically when the 15-week and 24-week markers were addressed. 

Overall, nearly three quarters believed in legal abortion at six weeks, including more than half of Republicans. However, just 51% supported legal abortion at 15 weeks, and only 27% backed it as far as 24 weeks. 

The poll was conducted June 22-26, 2023, and featured 1,220 respondents. The margin of error was +/- 3.9 percentage points.