Kamala Harris warns women may lose right to ‘make decisions about their own bodies’ in commencement speech

Vice President Kamala Harris gave a sobering take a look at the “unsettled” world college students are heading into as she delivered the graduation speech at Tennessee State College on Saturday.

The vice chairman mentioned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in addition to the looming risk Roe v. Wade might be overturned by the Supreme Courtroom after a draft opinion leaked earlier this week.

“The world that you simply graduate into is unsettled,” Harris mentioned. “It’s a world the place long-established ideas now relaxation on shaky floor. We see this in Ukraine, the place Russia’s invasion threatens worldwide guidelines and norms which have offered unprecedented peace and safety in Europe since World Battle II.”

“We believed that the ideas of sovereignty and territorial integrity had for essentially the most half prevailed, that democracy had prevailed,” she continued. “However now the understanding of basic ideas is being known as into query, together with the ideas of equality and equity.”

The group erupted in cheers when Harris remarked that the scholars had been dealing with an unsettled world the place Roe v. Wade could also be overturned.

“In the US, we’re as soon as once more compelled to defend basic ideas that we hoped had been lengthy settled — ideas like the liberty to vote, the rights of girls to make choices about their very own our bodies, even what constitutes the reality, particularly in an period, when anybody can put up something on-line and declare it’s a truth,” Harris mentioned.

Harris congratulated the scholars on succeeding despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Class of 2022, you made it by way of and it can’t be denied additionally that your class has traveled a stony street — a pandemic that took away a lot of the faculty expertise that you simply as soon as imagined,” she mentioned.

Shifting to a extra optimistic tone, the vice chairman mentioned that every scholar is well-equipped to deal with the “largest challenges of at this time” by drawing from their lived experiences and private attributes.

“Most significantly, you may have the flexibility to see what might be unburdened by what has been,” she mentioned, drawing from her stump speech on the marketing campaign path.

As a fellow graduate of a traditionally Black school and college, she expressed “there is no such thing as a restrict to your capability for greatness.”

“I would like you all — every one among you — to all the time bear in mind that you’re not alone, that you simply come from folks, that you simply include folks,” she mentioned. “As a result of I promise you, there might be a time when you’ll stroll right into a boardroom or a courtroom or possibly even the Scenario Room, and you’ll stroll into the room and discover you’re the solely particular person in that room who seems such as you or has had your life expertise.

“At that second, you need to bear in mind you aren’t in that room alone. All the time know that you simply carry the voices of everybody right here and people upon whose shoulders you stand.”

Harris can be scheduled to offer the graduation speech on the U.S. Coast Guard Academy on Could 18.