Abortion ban is top priority for young women in North Carolina when considering Harris or Trump

With enthusiasm already high among black women, Harris’ campaign will focus on using the abortion issue to win over suburban white and Latina women, Jackson said. No Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina since Barack Obama in 2008.

In the final weeks of the campaign, North Carolina saw a series of dueling visits from the presidential candidates and their surrogates. Trump surveyed storm damage in western North Carolina on Monday after Harris stopped by a predominantly black church and gathered a crowd of 7,000 people at Eastern Carolina University earlier this month.

Last Thursday, as a record 353,166 votes were cast at polling places across the state, Harris’ running mate Tim Walz implored the crowd in a Winston-Salem high school gymnasium to consider that the Access to abortion could be further restricted under a second Trump presidency. Voters, he argued, should not believe the former president’s declaration that he would refuse to sign a national abortion ban.

“The people in our lives — our wives, our daughters, our mothers, our friends, for God’s sake, our neighbors — their lives are literally at stake in how we vote,” Walz said.

Harris’ campaign has 29 local offices and more than 340 staffers in the state and has made reaching out to Black and younger voters a priority, the campaign said. Trump’s team forwarded an email request for details about his campaign’s presence to Sawyer, who represents a conservative part of the Charlotte suburbs.

Harris’ campaign could find the votes it needs in the hills of fast-growing Forsyth County, filled with women, college students and active young professionals. The county seat of Winston-Salem, filled with modern apartment lofts converted from former cigarette factories and artsy coffee shops, added the most people, a change that helped Democrats take power in the once blue-collar city after years of Republican control. The city’s economy runs, in part, on more than half a dozen colleges, including Wake Forest University.

It was on one of those college campuses where 21-year-old Jenny Gonzalez said the issue of abortion motivated her to register to vote in her first election. She will vote for Harris.

“It should be access for all women, regardless of their situation, because everyone goes through different things and you don’t know why you decide to have an abortion,” said Gonzalez, who studies pharmaceutical technology at Forsyth Technical Community College.

About 120 miles southeast of Winston-Salem, 48-year-old Christine Ducheneaux sat on a bench in downtown Fayetteville as she explained why abortion is also her biggest issue.

“For me, it’s just about bodily autonomy,” said Ducheneaux, a mother of three. “I hate to use generalizations, but, you know, as older white men, making a decision about what’s good, what’s best for me or my family or my life, is crazy. You’re not my doctor, you know?

Ducheneaux said she wasn’t excited about voting for President Joe Biden, but when he dropped out, she was “super excited” about supporting Harris.

The abortion restrictions have left tattoo artist Liz “Gruesome” Haycraft, 44, a former Republican who once opposed abortion, feeling nervous. Haycraft doesn’t plan to have children, but worries about women who face difficulties getting medical care.

“There is no reason why women have to give up their lives or their bodies,” said Haycraft, who plans to vote for Harris.

Outside a Planned Parenthood clinic, armed with bags of snacks and anti-abortion pamphlets for anyone entering the facility, 45-year-old Laura Browne tried to persuade women to talk to her. The retired Air Force sergeant and mother of two daughters believes Democrats are using abortion horror stories to scare young women.

“I believe they are being told that there is only one option and that they are too young to have children,” said Browne, who works for a nearby anti-abortion center that counsels pregnant women. wrong.”

Browne declined to share how she would vote in the election.

Republicans, for the most part, are downplaying the issue. The Trump campaign is running ads in the state rather than attacking Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgery. And locally, GOP supporters are raising questions about how the Biden administration responded to the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

Abortion may resonate more deeply with younger women, but they are also a historically untrustworthy voting bloc, said Linda L. Petrou, a longtime Forsyth County Republican and ward chairwoman.

“There may be more women – younger women – voting for Harris because of this,” Petrou acknowledged, but added, “the percentage of young people who vote is relatively small.”