Kamala Harris is the Democratic Party’s leading voice on abortion rights—a priority issue for many voters.
Within hours of President Joe Biden’s announcing he would withdraw from the presidential race, 44,000 Black women met online and raised over $1.5 million for Vice President Kamala Harris in just an hour and a half. On the popular fundraising website Act Blue, Democrats raised over $90 million in the first 24 hours from 888,000 donors, 60 percent giving for the first time, making it the third-largest single day in the website’s history. “This might be the greatest fundraising moment in Democratic Party history,” said Democratic digital strategist Kenneth Pennington.
Even before Biden’s announcement, Harris was out-polling him in all six swing states and was ahead of him in states that Democrats need to hold, such as Minnesota and Virginia. While there are many factors as to why Harris has received such enthusiastic support, one hugely important reason is her leadership on reproductive rights.
Harris has been a long-standing and vocal supporter of women’s reproductive rights. After the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, Harris traveled the country convening state legislators to discuss reproductive rights in Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana. In Washington, D.C., she brought together legislators from Montana, Indiana, Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska. She also spoke with healthcare providers, constitutional law experts, faith leaders, state attorneys general, disability rights leaders and women’s rights advocates.
Harris is the Democratic Party’s leading voice on abortion rights—a priority issue for many voters.
- Nearly three-quarters of voters support a women’s right to make their own reproductive decisions, including about abortion, contraception and continuing a pregnancy without governmental interference.
- Almost two-thirds of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
- The majority of residents in Republican-controlled states (57 percent) and nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of residents in battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
- Abortion rights are a top issue for women voters—especially young women—ranking above inflation and rising prices.
Since June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, seven states have had abortion-related ballot measures. Voters chose to protect abortion rights in all seven states by wide margins, including in Kansas (59 to 41), California (67 to 33), Michigan (57 to 43), Vermont (77 to 23), Kentucky (52 to 48), Montana (53 to 47) and Ohio (57 to 43). With a 100 percent success rate thus far, reproductive rights activists are pushing for abortion rights ballot measures in another 11 states this fall, with the added hope they will turn out voters in battleground states like Arizona and Nevada.
In stark contrast, the MAGA Project 2025 policy agenda calls on Trump to direct the Food and Drug Administration to reverse approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which is now used in 63 percent of all abortions, and to ban telehealth abortion, which now accounts for one-fifth of all abortions in the United States. Project 2025 directs the Department of Justice to misinterpret an 1873 anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, to criminally prosecute anyone who mails abortion pills and potentially any medical instrument used in procedural abortion—effectively establishing a nationwide ban on abortion.
The MAGA policy agenda also calls for a reversal of the Biden administration’s policy that requires hospitals to offer life-saving abortions in medical emergencies regardless of state bans and the withdrawal of Medicaid funds from states like Massachusetts that require insurance coverage for abortion.
Additionally, Project 2025 calls for the development of policies to oppose in vitro fertilization (IVF), reverse the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurance cover contraception without copays and eliminate insurance coverage for the morning-after pill Ella. It would also revive the Trump administration’s broad “religious and moral” exemptions to contraceptive coverage—which allowed employers to deny health insurance coverage for any form of contraception.
Harris’ leadership on reproductive rights is perhaps best demonstrated by a moment during the 2018 Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. When the latter refused to say whether he supported Roe v. Wade, then Senator Kamala Harris pressed him: “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” Kavanaugh eventually admitted he couldn’t, revealing the injustice of the task we all knew he’d been appointed to accomplish.
In the words of Hillary Clinton, “When we elect our first woman president and a Democratic Congress, we can restore Roe and reproductive freedom across the country.”
Up next:
U.S. democracy is at a dangerous inflection point—from the demise of abortion rights, to a lack of pay equity and parental leave, to skyrocketing maternal mortality, and attacks on trans health. Left unchecked, these crises will lead to wider gaps in political participation and representation. For 50 years, Ms. has been forging feminist journalism—reporting, rebelling and truth-telling from the front-lines, championing the Equal Rights Amendment, and centering the stories of those most impacted. With all that’s at stake for equality, we are redoubling our commitment for the next 50 years. In turn, we need your help, Support Ms. today with a donation—any amount that is meaningful to you. For as little as $5 each month, you’ll receive the print magazine along with our e-newsletters, action alerts, and invitations to Ms. Studios events and podcasts. We are grateful for your loyalty and ferocity.
