MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether women like it or not” showed the Republican presidential nominee’s lack of understanding of women’s “agency, their authority, their rights and their rights” decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”

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

Trump appointed three of the justices to the US Supreme Court who made up the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, Trump has boasted at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and make sure they wouldn’t “think about abortion.”

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

He told the audience that he told aides: “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.’

Harris said the remark was part of a pattern of troubling statements by Trump. “This is just the latest in a long line of revelations by the former president about how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.

Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, especially as women across the country face abortion restrictions that have gone far beyond the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Trump has given contradictory answers, saying women should be punished for having abortions and bragging about appointing judges. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters if elected he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and said he was “pro-life.”

But he has also promised in recent weeks to veto a national abortion ban, after repeatedly refusing to make such a promise. He has said states should regulate health care, saying some laws were “too tough.”