This year’s State of the Union address effectively doubled as a campaign launch for President Joe Biden as he sought to highlight the risks of a second term for Donald Trump.
Speaking a day and a half after Trump appeared to wrap up the GOP nomination, Biden put front and center the ways in which the former president could put the lives of those watching the speech in danger.
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Biden framed the race as a “battle for the soul of the nation.” This time, he’s arguing that it’s not just the soul of the nation that’s on the line; it’s the very bodies of those who inhabit it — from their access to health care to their ability to make decisions about when and how to start a family.
The speech came in a week in which former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley suspended her bid for the Republican nomination, having won just one state on Super Tuesday, while outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell threw his support behind Trump, the man he once said was “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. McConnell’s falling in line was all the more remarkable given that the attack on the Capitol literally put him in danger.
As in every State of the Union, Biden touched on a laundry list of urgent issues: providing desperately needed aid to Ukraine, curbing the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, ensuring the right to vote, protecting transgender Americans, raising the minimum wage, securing gun safety reform, and more.
But Biden also put an emphasis on healthcare policy during the State of the Union.
As reproductive rights face unrelenting attacks in the post-Roe era, the president emphasized his support for bodily autonomy. He did so as Latorya Beasley, whose in-vitro fertilization treatments were canceled after the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling, and Kate Cox, who had to leave her home state of Texas for a lifesaving abortion, listened beside the first lady, Jill Biden.
After…
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