This year marks the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and abortion has been at the forefront of the election cycle.
This election will see the highest number of statewide abortion-related measures appearing on the ballot in a single year. It’s become the most important issue in this election for women under 30, according to a survey by KFF. And it’s taken center stage in the race for the country’s highest office, with two candidates who have starkly different stances on the issue.
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Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has positioned herself as the reproductive rights candidate, vowing to restore reproductive freedoms and garnering endorsements from organizations like the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF), the Committee to Protect Health Care, and Reproductive Freedom for All. She has promised to support a bill restoring Roe’s protections or veto any national abortion ban.
Meanwhile, Harris has cast her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, as a threat to reproductive rights. Harris has lambasted Trump for his role in the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, since he appointed three of the Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe. She has argued that Trump would enact a federal ban on abortion if he were to win the presidency (a claim he has denied, although he has repeatedly refused to say if he’d veto a ban if it crossed his desk and has in the past expressed support for national restrictions). The Harris campaign declined to comment on the record for this story.
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“Voters have, I think, two jobs if they want to restore abortion access: If they have a ballot initiative, they need to vote directly in support of abortion, and they need to vote for Harris,” says Alexandra LaManna, former White House spokesperson for reproductive rights in the Biden Administration and a Democratic strategist. “Harris is the only candidate on the presidential ticket who has said that she wants to restore the protections of Roe.”
Although the majority of Americans support access to abortion, 13 states have banned abortion in almost all situations and eight others have banned it at or before 18 weeks of pregnancy.
Harris has promised that, if elected President, she would sign a bill into law if Congress passes one that would reinstate the protections that Roe guaranteed. Harris, a former senator, has said she would support eliminating the filibuster so the bill could be passed with a simple majority. Still, it’s highly unlikely that legislation codifying abortion rights would reach the next President’s desk unless Democrats control both chambers of Congress.
GOP consultant Barrett Marson says he thinks that “anything legislative is likely off the table” on abortion policy, given the slim margins in the House and Senate. He says that, for Harris, maintaining the status quo of abortion policy “may be as good as it gets.”
But others say that the Vice President has a clearly demonstrated commitment to addressing reproductive rights. “I think realistically it’s hard to know without knowing the make-up of Congress,” Melanie Newman, senior vice president of communications and culture at the PPAF, says of the likelihood of Congress passing a bill to restore abortion rights nationwide. “But what we do know is that Kamala Harris is committed to reproductive health and freedom. It has been an issue she has championed even before she was the nominee. It’s something she speaks passionately about, she cares about, and I think would be very, very high on the list of her early priorities.”
Advocates point to Harris’ track record. She co-sponsored legislation as a California Senator that would have prevented states from restricting abortion. During her time in the Senate, she voted against a bill that would have banned abortion nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy. She has denounced the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, and has led the White House’s efforts to protect reproductive health care access. She is the first sitting Vice President or President in known history to visit an abortion clinic.
Read More: What Kind of President Would Kamala Harris Be?
Much of Harris’ campaign has been centered on abortion and reproductive rights. On her campaign website, she vows that, if elected President, she would “never allow a national abortion ban to become law,” and that she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, both “trust women to make decisions about their own bodies, and not have the government tell them what to do.” She has met with women across the country who have been denied care because of their state’s abortion restrictions, and some of them have joined her on the campaign trail.
“I’m an expert in medicine, not politics,” says Dr. Maya Bass, a family physician, abortion provider, and co-chair of the Committee to Protect Health Care’s Reproductive Freedom Taskforce. “What I do know though is that [Harris] has shown over and over again that she’s going to support reproductive rights… And so I do believe her that she is going to put energy towards whatever legislation is needed to ensure reproductive access to Americans.”
Trump has falsely accused Democrats of allowing abortions “after birth”—that would be infanticide, which is illegal in all states. Anti-abortion groups have repeated similar false claims—Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement that a Harris-Walz Administration and Democratic-majority Congress would allow “abortions through the ninth month.” Harris has repeatedly stressed that she would restore the protections of Roe, which guaranteed the right to abortion up to fetal viability, or about 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
At the same time, some reproductive rights advocates have criticized Harris making Roe a major focus of her campaign, saying that she needs to go further. But others argue that restoring Roe is the necessary first step to address the threats to reproductive health care across the country, and that the alternative—a Trump presidency—would further threaten reproductive rights.
“One thing is for certain: We will not have any access if Kamala Harris does not win this election,” Newman says. “We at Planned Parenthood [Action Fund] have always said [Roe] was the floor. And since 2022, since the Dobbs case, that floor has been knocked from underneath us. We absolutely can and should fight for more, but we can’t do that if [Harris is] not President.”
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