WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday plans to tour a Minnesota clinic that performs abortions and provides other reproductive care as Democrats play up their opposition to the rollback of abortion rights in an effort to help reelect President Joe Biden in November.

It will be the first time that a president or vice president has been to a reproductive health clinic, according to Harris’ office.

Her trip to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is part of a nationwide tour she began in January to draw attention to the fallout after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. The decision cleared the way for Republican-led states to enact limitations or bans on the procedure.

Harris, the first woman elected vice president, has been the Democratic administration’s loudest voice condemning the court’s decision, arguing that the government has no right to tell a woman what she can do with her body. While Biden has vowed to be the president who restores the protections of Roe, he tends to talk about the “right to choose” instead of saying “abortion.”

Abortion rights have proved to be a potent issue driving voters to the polls and boosting Democrats ever since the high court ended the constitutional right to the procedure nearly two years ago. The issue could be pivotal in the presidential race and congressional contests this year.

In Minnesota, the vice president planned to visit a health center during operating hours. Her office declined to identify the facility before she arrives there, citing security reasons. The center provides a range of services, including abortion, birth control and preventative wellness care.

Harris was scheduled to tour the facility, speak with staff and be briefed on how Minnesota has been affected by abortion bans in surrounding states. Her office said she’ll talk about what the Biden administration has done to protect reproductive rights.

She also was scheduled to speak at a Biden-Harris campaign event tailored to women.

There are no restrictions on abortion at any stage of pregnancy in Minnesota. Biden won the state by 7 percentage points in 2020 on the way to defeating then-President Donald Trump, a Republican.

Biden and Trump each have now won enough delegates to be considered their parties’ presumptive nominees for president, setting up a rematch in November.

Biden and his Democratic surrogates have been highlighting comments by Trump in which the former president takes credit for presiding over the end of Roe. Trump put three conservative justices on the high court, tipping its ideological balance in favor of eliminating a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy with its 2022 decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Since then, Democrats have felt encouraged by electoral victories in 2022 and 2023 when abortion access was on the ballot. And in his State of the Union address last week, Biden vowed that “we’ll win again in 2024.”

In the speech, he also said that if voters “send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz enshrined the right to abortion and other reproductive health care into state law in January 2023 when he signed a bill meant to ensure that the state’s existing protections remain in place no matter who sits on future courts.

Democratic leaders took advantage of their new control of both houses of the Legislature to rush the bill through in the first month of the 2023 legislative session. They credited the backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe v. Wade for their takeover of the state Senate and for keeping their House majority in a year when Republicans expected to make gains.

Abortion is currently illegal in more than a dozen states, including Minnesota neighbors North Dakota and South Dakota, and is restricted in Iowa and Wisconsin. Minnesota has experienced a surge of patients coming to the state for abortions because of restrictions elsewhere.

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As Oakdale officers converged on Devione Leeante Malone, he told a woman who was with him and her young granddaughter that he would rather die than go back to prison.

Malone soon fired a shot at an officer’s squad outside the woman’s house, then several more from a window of the home, according to Wednesday’s criminal complaint charging the 25-year-old from St. Paul with two counts of first-degree attempted murder of a peace officer, four counts of first-degree assault and possessing a firearm after being convicted of a crime of violence.

Devione Leeante Malone (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)

At least one Oakdale officer exchanged gunfire with Malone, who barricaded himself in a house before law enforcement took him into custody early Tuesday, police said. No injuries were reported.

The incident happened just under a month after two Burnsville police officers and a firefighter/paramedic were shot and killed. The Burnsville officers were responding to a 911 call about a domestic dispute when a gunman barricaded himself in a home with seven children on Feb. 18.

Malone has an open first-degree burglary case and a court order prohibiting him from having contact with the woman, the charges say.

He remains jailed ahead of a first hearing in Washington County District Court on Thursday.

‘I’ll die before I go back’

According to the complaint, dispatch received a 911 call just before 10 p.m. Monday from a man who said his friend needed help. He said she was a passenger in a car with her 1½-year-old granddaughter near some businesses at Bergen Plaza by Hadley Avenue and 10th Street.

Four Oakdale squad cars responded to the area and attempted to surround the car in the parking lot. Malone sped off, and evaded officers before turning south onto Hadley Avenue North.

Officers determined that Malone was likely driving back to the woman’s home in the 100 block of Greystone Avenue, so two of them broke off and tried to get ahead of him.

As Malone pulled into the driveway, he got out and fired a shot at an officer who was behind him. The bullet hit the squad car’s right front fender and ricocheted into the passenger mirror, the complaint says.

Malone ran inside the house. The woman got out of the car and “frantically got her grandchild out of the backseat of the car before running towards officers,” the complaint says.

All four officers lined up their squad cars in front of the home, using them for cover.

Squad camera footage shows a center window opening from the home. About seven seconds later, Malone fired three shots at the officers from the window. One shot hit the top of an officer’s squad car windshield on the driver’s side just to the right of where he was standing.

The Washington County SWAT team responded with an armored vehicle and eventually took Malone into custody after a several-hour standoff. No other people were inside the home, where officers recovered a black .22-caliber handgun and spent shell casings.

Officers interviewed the woman, who said Malone went to her home earlier that day. She said Malone’s mood was fine, until it changed. She said she knew he was carrying a gun and that “she had to get her granddaughter away” from him, the complaint says. She sent a text message to a friend asking him to get help.

When Malone saw squad cars pull up to Bergen Plaza, he told the woman, “I’ll die before I go back to prison.”

Once in custody, Malone admitted the handgun was his and said he always carried it with him, the complaint says. He said he assumed he was going to jail on the no-contact order violation, and claimed he did not remember shooting at officers.

Teen record

Malone has several prior convictions for crimes of violence going back to his teenage years.

When he was 16, he was charged with first-degree arson and, when he was 17, he was sent to the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Red Wing in the case, court records show.

He was subsequently charged in assaults involving two correctional officers at Red Wing in 2016, six at the Lino Lakes prison in 2016 and four at the Oak Park Heights prison in 2018. In one case, a correctional officer sustained a brain bleed and facial fractures. He was convicted of assaulting another inmate at the St. Cloud prison in 2017.

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