San Francisco: Indian-American Republican presidential aspirant Nikki Haley has lent her support to an extreme abortion ban at six weeks after conception when many women don’t yet know they are pregnant, drawing a strong reaction from the Biden-Harris campaign which called her an anti-abortion extremist.
“If you were governor of South Carolina and that came to your desk, would you sign the heartbeat bill?” Haley was asked on Friday.
“Yes,” Haely, who is contesting for the Republican Party's nomination for the 2024 US presidential election, replied.
A six-week abortion ban, also called a "fetal heartbeat bill" by proponents, is a law in the United States which makes abortion illegal as early as six weeks gestational age.
The Biden-Harris campaign on Friday slammed Haley, 51, for lending support for extreme abortion bans.
“Nikki Haley is no moderate – she’s an anti-abortion MAGA (Make America Great Again) extremist who wants to rip away women’s freedoms just like she did when she was South Carolina governor,” Biden-Harris 2024 Rapid Response director Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
Make America Great Again is a political slogan which was popularised by Donald Trump during his successful 2016 presidential campaign.
“Now Haley is promising to bring that same fear, anxiety, and dread she forced on South Carolina women to every woman in the country,” he said.
“Whether it’s Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, or any other MAGA extremist – the entire field is running on a dangerous anti-freedom agenda that the American people have made clear they do not want,” Moussa said.