FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris looks on during a roundtable on criminal justice in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S. April 25, 2024. / REUTERS/Bonnie Cash

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -  U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris headed for Florida to denounce the state's six-week abortion ban as it takes effect on May 1, and to cast blame on Republican opponent Donald Trump, who has vowed to leave the issue to individual states.

Florida's top court this month cleared the way for a six-week abortion ban, a time-frame before many women realize they are pregnant. It also said a ballot measure legalizing abortion until viability could be voted on this November, which could benefit Democrats in an election where abortion is a top issue nationwide.

Harris will visit Jacksonville, a Democratic outpost, to denounce former President Trump for eliminating abortion rights in the state and highlight harms inflicted by state bans - in contrast to President Joe Biden's vow to protect access, a campaign official said.

"Today at the stroke of midnight, another Trump abortion ban went into effect here in Florida," Harris will say, according to excerpts released by the Biden-Harris reelection campaign. "This ban applies to many women before they even know they are pregnant – which tells us the extremists who wrote this ban don’t even know how a woman’s body works. Or they just don’t care."

Biden declared "Florida is in play nationally" when he visited last week, indicating Democrats could try flip the state, which voted Republican in recent presidential elections. 

"Trump ripped away the rights and freedom of women in America. This November, voters are going to teach him a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with the women of America," Biden said in a campaign statement on May 1.

The conservative U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe vs. Wade in 2022 opened the door for Florida and other states to set their own abortion laws. Trump campaigned in 2016 on adding judges who would overturn Roe and appointed three who did.

Harris has pushed for reproductive freedoms in more than 20 states and made a historic trip to an abortion clinic in March.

Democrats believe harsh restrictions such as those in Florida and Arizona, which earlier this month upheld a 160-year-old abortion ban, will benefit Biden given that U.S. voters overwhelmingly reject strict abortion bans.

Arizona's Republican-controlled House approved a repeal of an 1864 abortion law, with the state Senate poised to vote on it on May 1. 

FEW OPTIONS FOR WOMEN IN U.S. SOUTH

Abortion access is now almost non-existent in southern U.S. states. Florida had been a refuge for abortion-seekers from states such as Alabama and Georgia until April's ban passed.

In 2023, about 7,700 of some 84,000 abortions performed in Florida were for out-of-state residents, nearly 60 percent higher than two years earlier, state data show. About half of the state's 50 clinics operate independently from larger groups such as Planned Parenthood. Several told Reuters they do not know how long they can remain open.

Democratic party leaders in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia on Apr.30 attacked Trump and said Republican curbs on reproductive rights would galvanize voters.

"Access to reproductive healthcare is now effectively eliminated across the South," said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried.

The party's Virginia Chair Susan Swecker said she is "overcome by anger" that women must travel to her state, the only one in the southeast where abortions are legal. 

Trump has distanced himself from Arizona's ruling even as he took credit for appointing the three U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and made state restrictions possible, saying it should remain a state issue and declining to support a federal ban.

He previously said women who get abortions should be punished and, in an interview published on Tuesday, said he would allow Republican-led states to track women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate their state bans.

"The states are going to make those decisions," he told TIME magazine.

Biden has vowed to fight states' anti-abortion measures. He slammed Trump's latest comments that "once again endorsed punishing women for getting the care they need" as his campaign unveiled billboards denouncing Trump's "extreme and out of touch anti-freedom agenda" in Michigan and Wisconsin where Trump will be campaigning later on May 1.

Florida, with a hefty 30 Electoral College votes, in recent years has shifted from a battleground state to a Republican stronghold that Trump won in 2020 with 51.2 percent of the vote compared with Biden's 47.9 percent.

Some Biden aides think his and the party's optimism it could win the state could be misplaced. Opinion polls compiled by election data website FiveThirtyEight show Trump with a substantial lead.