PHOENIX (AP) — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows that the Republican presidential candidate does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own life, including their own body’. .”

“I think it’s offensive to everyone, by the way,” Harris said before heading off to spend the day campaigning in the western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.

She continued these comments during her rally in Phoenix: “He simply does not respect women’s freedom or women’s intelligence to know what is in their own best interest and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women.”

Trump’s comments come as he struggles to connect with female voters and as Harris woos women in both parties with a freedom-centered message. She argues that women should have the freedom to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow.

Trump appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreadshe claims at public events and in social media posts he would “protect women” and to ensure that they do not ‘think about abortion’.

At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate.”

He then added a new piece to the protective line. He said he told his assistants, “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.”

Harris said the comment was part of a pattern of troubling statements from Trump.

“This is just the latest in a long series of revelations from the former president about how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.

Harris tied Trump’s comments to his approach to reproductive rights, but Trump generally speaks more about protecting women from criminals, terrorists and foreign adversaries, consistent with the bleak picture he paints of a country in decline.

“I am going to protect them against the arrival of migrants. I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and much more,” Trump said at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

He appeared to connect abortion when he first used the “protector language” in a Truth Social post and at a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on September 20. He assured the women who would be “protected” that they would “no longer think about abortion.”

The dispute showed signs Thursday of further entrenching each candidate’s supporters.

It wasn’t just women who labeled Trump’s comments offensive. At the Harris rally in Phoenix, Edison Kinlicheenie, 50, said he sees Trump more as a threat than a protector, noting that the former president is a track record of preying on women.

“I have a wife and a daughter, so I wouldn’t let a predator like that come around,” Kinlicheenie said.

At a Trump rally in Albuquerque, Sarah Pyle, 41, cited opposition to allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s events to portray Trump as someone who helps women.

“I don’t want my girls to grow up in a world like this,” the Albuquerque mother said, referring to the controversy. “We have fought for women’s rights for so long, and now we are giving them back to men. There’s no point.”

More broadly, Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, especially as women across the country struggle to get good medical care because of abortion restrictions that have had implications far beyond the ability to to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Trump has given conflicting answers on his position on abortion, saying at some points that women should be punished for having an abortion, and highlighting the judges he appointed. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters that if elected he would appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade and said he was “pro-life.”

But in recent weeks he has pledged to veto a national abortion ban after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He has said states should regulate health care and that some laws are “too strict.”

Since 2022, the patchwork of state laws on abortion has led to unequal medical care. Some women have died. Others have bled in the emergency department parking lots or became seriously ill from sepsis, because doctors in states with strict abortion bans turn pregnant women away until they are sick enough to warrant medical care. This also applies to women who never intended to terminate a pregnancy. Both infant and maternal mortality have increased.

Harris’ campaign has highlighted Trump’s statements about women. In one campaign ad, a woman who became seriously ill from sepsis after a pregnancy complication stands in front of a mirror, looking at a large scar on her stomach, as Trump’s comments about protecting women play.

Harris hopes abortion will be a strong motivator for women at the ballot box.

So far, 1.2 million more women than men have voted in the seven battleground states, according to data from analytics firm TargetSmart.

That doesn’t necessarily translate into democratic gains. But in the 2020 presidential election, he said, there was a 9 percentage point difference between men and women in support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. AP VoteCasta survey among more than 110,000 voters.

The Democratic ticket was supported by 55% of women and 46% of men. That was essentially unchanged from the 2018 midterm elections, when VoteCast found a 10-point gender gap, with 58% of women and 48% of men supporting Democrats in congressional races.

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Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque and Gabriel Sandoval and JJ Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.