By Gabriella Porter
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) – A crowd gathered around a blue bus and listened intently as Hadley Duvall, an abortion rights advocate and supporter of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, told how she was raped and impregnated by her stepfather when she was 12.
Duvall eventually had a miscarriage, but she said that under new abortion laws in her home state of Kentucky, she would have had to carry the pregnancy to term.
Aleida Garcia, 53, held a Harris campaign sign in Spanish and cried. Her son, Brandon Rodriguez, 18, wiped a tear from his mother’s cheek. As a first-time voter, he has yet to decide between Harris, a Democrat, and Republican Donald Trump.
Duvall’s story, which was part of Harris’s “Reproductive Freedom” campaign bus tour, made Garcia think of her own granddaughters.
“You never know when something like this might happen. I want them to have a choice,” Garcia said.
Reuters followed the bus’s two-day tour of Pennsylvania. Most of the attendees supported Harris, but a few, like Rodriguez, came to hear more about her. Voters like him are the small group that could influence the outcome of the Nov. 5 election.
Democrats see abortion rights as a popular issue that Harris could use against Trump, a Republican who as president appointed three Supreme Court justices who in 2022 helped overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Aug. 21-28 found that a majority of voters, including 34 percent of Republicans, want the next president to protect or increase access to abortion.
Trump says he supports abortion rights in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk, but says it is up to each state to decide for itself, some of which allow no exceptions. He denies Democratic assertions that he plans to sign a law banning abortion nationwide.
The bus will make at least 50 stops, starting with a few laps around Trump’s home in West Palm Beach, Fla. The bus will head to all seven swing states expected to decide the election. The goal is to take the fight to voters in small towns and neighborhoods that large rallies won’t reach.
Speakers get on and off the bus, including Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, actors, influencers, local radio hosts, podcasters and senators. Stops include colleges, health centers and beer halls in places like Allentown, population 126,000.
“You can reach communities that you can’t easily reach by having managers shuttle back and forth,” said Morgan Mohr, a senior adviser to the Reproductive Rights Campaign, who rode the bus through swing states Florida, Georgia and North Carolina before arriving in Pennsylvania.
Harris has pledged to restore the protections provided by Roe, though she would need Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to do so — a slim chance in the 2024 elections.
In Allentown, a left-leaning city that is more than 50 percent Latino, the campaign distributed empanadas to appeal to a demographic that Democrats have been losing ground among in recent years.
Garcia, a native of Honduras who has been a Democratic voter since becoming a citizen, heard about the event that morning on a local Spanish-language radio station. One of the featured speakers was radio host Victor Martinez, who made the first political endorsement of Harris in his three-decade career.
Garcia said she brought her son, who works at an amusement park, so he could hear about the campaign and make an informed voting decision.
“I think I’ll probably vote for Harris,” Rodriguez said after the show ended, adding that he still finds Trump funny but doesn’t want him to be president again.
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