Harris emerges as top abortion voice, warns of more fallout
WASHINGTON >> During Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, then-California Sen. Kamala Harris asked the judge if he thought women's privacy rights extended to choosing to have an abortion. Kavanaugh declined to answer.
With Justice Kavanaugh now part of the court majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and the senator now the vice president, Harris is warning that the court's decision could trigger some of the same farreaching privacy limitations she warned of during those hearings.
Taking to the issue with a passion linked both to her personal and professional background, Harris has spent recent weeks sounding the alarm that upending Roe could create precedent for new restrictions on everything from contraception and in vitro fertilization to gay marriage and the right to vote.
Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to validate such concerns, writing in a concurring opinion to the larger ruling on Roe that the high court “should reconsider” past decisions on access to contraception and same-sex marriage.
Harris has been a leading Biden administration voice on abortion rights since early May, when a leaked draft opinion previewed Roe v. Wade's nullification. She was flying to Illinois for a maternal health event when the final decision was announced last week, and read it while still in the air — quickly shifting the focus of her planned remarks to the ruling.
The decision “calls into question other rights that we thought were settled, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same sex marriage, the right to interracial message,” Harris told her audience Friday at a suburban YMCA, adding that it would
spark a “health care crisis.”
During an interview Monday with CNN, Harris said, “I definitely think this not over,” adding that, of what Thomas wrote, “I think he just said the quiet part out loud.”
Becoming a leading voice on abortion access could be a better fit for Harris after President Joe Biden tasked her with overseeing other thorny issues that haven't gone well: immigration and expanding voting rights. Sweeping legislation on both issues has stalled in Congress, prompting some advocates to say the vice president and the White House should've done more.
Harris symbolically presiding over the Senate didn't stop Republicans from blocking efforts to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law before the court's ruling overturning it. But Democrats are hoping anger around the issue will energize their base for the November midterm elections, when the party faces steep headwinds.
After the draft Supreme Court opinion leaked, the vice president convened a virtual discussion with doctors and nurses providing abortion care in states with strict restrictions and met with Democratic attorneys general from states supportive of reproductive rights.
Harris, the first female vice president and California's
former top prosecutor, brings unique personal perspective and legal expertise to the issue.
As a senator, Harris introduced legislation to improve maternal health. During a 2019 Democratic presidential primary debate, thencandidate Harris said it was “outrageous” that abortion had been overshadowed by other issues, despite a woman's right to the procedure being “under full-on attack” even then.
The vice president most forcefully signaled the outspoken role when she declared a day after the draft opinion leaked in May: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women, well, we say, how dare they?”
She then used subsequent weeks to argue that undermining Roe v. Wade could soon wipe out other key privacy rights — the same theme she raised during Kavanaugh's hearing.
Harris' office says she is indeed building a coalition, but it will be one of people who believe that Roe v. Wade's effects far exceeded abortion, and not just for women. To help drive home that point, Harris met recently in Los Angeles with religious leaders, noting that “to support Roe v. Wade, and all it stands for, does not mean giving up your beliefs.”