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Gov. Josh Shapiro will headline a Sunday reproductive-rights rally for Kamala Harris campaign in Old City

Josh Shapiro and Hadley Duvall will headline a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign in Old City on Sunday.

Gov. Josh Shapiro takes the stage ahead of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz at a rally in Philadelphia's Liacouras Center on August 6, 2024.
Gov. Josh Shapiro takes the stage ahead of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz at a rally in Philadelphia's Liacouras Center on August 6, 2024.Read moreJose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro will kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign’s “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour in Philadelphia at 11 a.m. Sunday.

The popular Democratic governor will headline the Old City event alongside Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky reproductive-rights advocate whose stepfather sexually abused and impregnated her as a child. Duvall has been making stops across the country.

Sunday’s rally will be the first event Shapiro headlines for Harris since the vice president passed him over as a running mate in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, but he’s been a regular presence on the campaign trail and a top surrogate for her in recent weeks.

The governor spoke in support of Harris last month at the Philadelphia rally where she introduced Walz as her running mate and later delivered a prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This week, he was among the prominent Democrats in the spin room for Harris at Tuesday night’s debate, and notably the only Pennsylvanian.

Sunday’s event kicks off the Pennsylvania leg of a nationwide Harris campaign bus tour focusing on one of the Democrat’s top issues, reproductive rights. The campaign plans to make more than a dozen stops across Pennsylvania next week and has said it hopes to reach voters in both parties with the effort.

“Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom,” Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

The Nov. 5 election will be the first presidential contest since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and states across the country enacted abortion bans.

Harris has promised to reinstate federal abortion protections and in Tuesday’s debate aggressively challenged former President Donald Trump’s record as the president who appointed three of the six justices who issued the ruling.

Harris invoked stories of women denied medical care for miscarriages or life-threatening pregnancies because of state laws, and incidents of children pregnant by incest forced to cross state lines to obtain an abortion.

“I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about your own body, should not be made by the government,” she said.