Many reproductive rights advocates let out a quiet sigh of relief when President Joe Biden announced on Sunday afternoon that he would not seek reelection. Shortly after, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, quickly shifting the political landscape on one of the most important issues of the 2024 presidential election.
Pro-choice advocates have repeatedly knocked the president for not being more aggressive on abortion rights. Nearly half the country has effectively criminalized abortion care since the Supreme Court repealed federal protections, and the president still struggles to say the word “abortion.” Several progressive abortion rights groups have also criticized Biden for his “Restore Roe” campaign — a welcomed move for a president to center abortion care — but some said it didn’t go far enough given how deeply flawed Roe v. Wade was.
But Harris is a different story. The vice president has been the administration’s biggest defender of abortion rights in the two years since the Dobbs ruling. She has met with reproductive rights groups at the White House, traveled around the country highlighting the harms of abortion bans and advocated for affordable child care and paid family leave. Earlier this year, she became the first president or vice president to visit an abortion clinic. She also doesn’t seem to have a problem saying the word abortion.
“As vice president, her voice has been critical in elevating the conversation on abortion since Roe was overturned,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of abortion storytelling organization We Testify.
“The fact that she has visited abortion clinics and met with abortion providers, that’s leadership that we were asking of the president and he simply could not step up and do.”
Reproductive rights groups are feeling a renewed sense of energy since Harris’ presumed shift to the top of the ticket. Many described Harris as much more “bold” and “intentional” when discussing abortion care — a topic that has become a liability for Republicans, who many voters believe went too far with abortion restrictions post-Dobbs. Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called Harris’ candidacy “invigorating,” adding that the vice president’s presence “takes the conversation around abortion rights to heights we’ve never seen before in a presidential campaign.”
Harris is offering a glimmer of hope for Democrats.
“The energy in the Democratic Party is palpable right now,” Jessica Mackler, president of EMILYs List, told HuffPost. “The outpouring of support that we’ve seen for the vice president over the past not even 24 hours is really remarkable. And I think that reflects that they understand that there is no one more prepared to win this election and no one more prepared to lead this country than Vice President Harris.”
Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, told HuffPost she was deeply honored to work with Biden and praised the president for his work on reproductive rights. But unlike the president, who started his decades-long career in politics with anti-abortion views, Timmaraju said Harris’ stance on abortion “didn’t need to evolve.”
“She’s deeply steeped in it. She understands it. She’s had reproductive freedom experts in her administrations, in her offices. This has been an issue in her portfolio,” said Timmaraju, who has worked with the Biden-Harris administration on abortion rights. “She absolutely brings new energy, enthusiasm, excitement and credibility.”
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Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) and other national organizations had been working to close what Timmaraju referred to as the “enthusiasm gap” for young voters and Biden. Biden stepping down from reelection completely takes away that concern.
“That’s really important,” she said, “because we need them to be enthusiastically out there pounding the pavement for Kamala Harris.”
Many organizers are excited about the possibility of a Democratic nominee who could take opponent Donald Trump to task on his party’s extreme anti-abortion policies. During last month’s debate that set off the public’s scrutiny around Biden’s capability to stay in office, the president was unable to spar with Trump on critical questions, including fact-checking the former president’s abortion statements. Harris, a former prosecutor, may be more up to the task given that her rise to fame came in part from her sharp-witted takedowns during Senate hearings, including when she grilled then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Monica Simpson, president of the women of color-focused reproductive justice organization SisterSong, has spoken with Harris on the issue of abortion and believes the vice president understands that Roe is the bare minimum and that much more is needed to reach true reproductive justice.
“What she has proven to us so far is that she is going to be a lot more bold, a lot more ‘abortion out loud’ than President Biden has been,” Simpson said. “And I think that she is open to figuring out the ways in which policies can support what it looks like to be more expansive.”
As a Black, South Asian American woman, Harris tries to “understand what this issue looks like at the intersections,” Simpson said — which is key to creating a long-lasting and effective abortion policy. Regina Davis Moss, the president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, believes Harris understands the difference between reproductive rights and reproductive justice. (The latter is a larger framework that includes three pillars: the right to have a child, the right to not have a child and the right to parent in a safe and healthy environment.)
Davis Moss was one of the 44,000 Black women who logged onto a Zoom call on Sunday to support Harris as the potential Democratic presidential nominee. The meeting hit its maximum limit of 1,000 people immediately, and the group got a hold of the CEO of Zoom to ensure everyone who wanted to could join. The group raised $1.5 million in just a few hours.
“This is such a critical time for Black women. That is why we’re so excited,” Davis Moss told HuffPost. “We are seeing our fundamental human civil rights dismantled, and that’s going to impact our livelihood, our safety and our joy. I believe this is an opportunity … for us to actually fight for and get what we have been fighting for for 30 years.”
