A long-time national champion of abortion rights is on her way to the top of the Democratic ticket. And Vice President Kamala Harris will kick Donald Trump’s ass on the issue.
Harris has been the abortion-rights lead in President Joe Biden’s administration, with a crystal clear message. Here she is at a rally in June:
I do believe when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. We stand for the freedom of every American, including the freedom of every person everywhere to make decisions—about their own body, their own health care and their own doctor. So we fight for reproductive rights and legislation that restores the protections of Roe v. Wade. And here’s the thing. The majority of Americans are with us, they agree.
Americans believe in freedom. And we will not allow you to destroy our most basic rights and principles.
Harris has been fighting for abortion rights—and against the anti-abortion extremists—for her whole career. As California’s attorney general, she championed legislation cracking down on crisis pregnancy centers, forcing them to disclose that they weren’t licensed medical providers and requiring them to inform clients how they could receive abortion care. (Unfortunately, the Supreme Court struck that law down in 2018.) Harris also joined with other blue-state attorneys general regularly to champion reproductive rights in the courts.
She kept at it when she went to the U.S. Senate, in 2019, sponsoring a bold abortion-rights bill modeled on the Voting Rights Act. The bill would have forced states trying to implement harsh abortion restrictions to present their new laws to the Department of Justice for preclearance—i.e., approval from the federal government—before they could be implemented.
Since the Trump-packed Supreme Court laid all those efforts to waste in 2022, ultimately ending the federal right to abortion, Harris became the leader in the fight to stop a national abortion ban and to help abortion-rights activists advance state-level protections.
Harris has been the heart of the now-defunct Biden-Harris campaign’s abortion-rights fight, with a national tour that kicked off in January. She made history in March by becoming the first president or vice president to visit a clinic that provides abortion services.
As writer Jessica Valenti notes, Harris has been so effective as a “direct and enthusiastic” because she has walked the talk and is not afraid to frankly talk about the issue. She understands—and can communicate—it from a rights perspective and from a health perspective, in contrast to Biden, who evolved to a pro-abortion-rights position but has seemed uncomfortable even using the word “abortion.”
Her command of the issue will show when she gets on a stage with Donald Trump—if he agrees to a debate. If he tries to repeat the lie that Democrats “will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth,” she’ll be able to deftly call bullshit and talk about the issue in ways that will energize and galvanize voters. She might even be able to make the traditional media focus on Trump’s bonkers claims.
Republicans and anti-abortion groups think they can paint her as extreme, though. As soon as Biden announced he was ending his presidential campaign, the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group issued a statement. “While Joe Biden has trouble saying the word abortion, Kamala Harris shouts it,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president.
What they don’t get is that that’s what women want to hear. Even 53% of Republican female voters in the critical 18-49 age group want a law that guarantees a federal right to abortion. And this is what those women will hear from Harris: “We trust women to know what is in their own best interest. And women trust all of us to fight to protect their most fundamental freedom.”
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