WASHINGTON –
During the 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Brett Cavanaugh, then-California Senator Kamala Harris asked the judge if she thought women’s privacy rights extended to the choice to have an abortion. Cavanaugh refused to answer.
As Judge Cavanaugh is already part of the judicial majority that voted to overturn Rowe against Wade and the senator, who is now vice president, Harris warns that the court’s decision could cause some of the same large-scale confidentiality restrictions she warned at the time. at these hearings.
Addressing the issue with a passion for both her personal and professional experience, Harris spent the last few weeks on the alert that Rowe’s suffering could set a precedent for new restrictions on everything from contraception and in vitro fertilization to gay marriage. states restricting such things also lead to new limits on the right to vote.
Judge Clarence Thomas seems to have confirmed such concerns, writing in a concurring opinion to the broader Rowe ruling that the Supreme Court “should reconsider” past decisions on access to contraception and same-sex marriage.
Harris has been a leading voice in the Biden administration on abortion rights since early May, when an expired draft opinion reviewed Roe’s annulment of Wade. She was flying to Illinois for a maternal health event when the final decision was announced last week and read it while she was still in the air – quickly shifting the focus of her planned remarks to the decision.
The decision “calls into question other rights that we thought were regulated, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage,” Harris told his audience in the YMCA suburb on Friday, adding that he would caused a “health crisis”.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Harris said, “I definitely think it’s not over,” adding that from what Thomas wrote, “I think he just said the quiet part of the voice.”
Becoming a leading voice on access to abortion may be more appropriate for Harris, after President Joe Biden commissioned her to oversee other difficult issues that did not go well: immigration and the expansion of voting rights. Extensive legislation on both issues stalled in Congress, prompting some advocates to say the vice president and the White House should have done more.
Harris, symbolically chairing the Senate, did not stop Republicans from blocking Rowe’s efforts to codify Wade in federal law before a court ruling overturned him. But Democrats hope anger over the issue will strengthen their base for the November midterm elections, when the party faces a sharp wind.
Turning directly to the issue’s policy after the announcement of the decision, Harris said: “You have the power to elect leaders to defend and defend your rights. You can act with your voice. And you have the last word.
After a Texas law effectively banned abortions in the state in the fall, Harris met with providers and patients, which her office believes is the first time abortion providers have visited the White House. She then stressed that gender discrimination continued, saying that “the full participation of women in our nation” was still just a goal, not a reality.
Following the Supreme Court’s draft opinion, the vice president convened a virtual discussion with doctors and nurses providing abortion care in severely restricted states and met with attorneys general of Democrats from countries supporting reproductive rights.
Biden also strongly defended abortion rights and warned that other rights were now threatened. But as an observant Catholic, he did not always have strong results on the issue.
Harris, the first female vice president and former California attorney general, brings a unique personal perspective and legal expertise to the issue.
“Seeing women fight on behalf of other women is very true to the essence of who she is,” said Jacqueline Ayers, senior vice president of politics, organizing and campaigning at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
She added that Harris had shaped the problem to highlight “the inequality it creates in black and brown communities and for low-income people.”
Ayers said the Supreme Court’s actions have allowed the vice president to emphasize how she used her office to listen to women and advocate for better health care – perhaps even in ways Biden could not.
“It’s not necessarily a wedge, it’s just a continuation of someone who has really put their careers around the issues that are key and the drivers for them,” Ayers said of the differences between Harris and Biden.
The Rev. John Dorhauer, the general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, attended a recent virtual meeting on abortion rights hosted by Harris and suggested that she was less afraid than some senior Democrats to advocate vigorously. .
“Hearing this from one of the highest offices in the country is incredibly encouraging,” Dorhauer said.
But some opponents of abortion say Harris has hurt her cause by equating access to abortion with other, more routine medical care.
“She has become emblematic of the absolutism of abortion on the other side,” said Marjorie Danenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, who advocates for women who oppose abortion in politics.
As a senator, Harris introduced legislation to improve maternal health. During the Democratic Party’s initial presidential debate in 2019, then-candidate Harris said it was “outrageous” that abortion was overshadowed by other issues, even though the woman’s right to the procedure was “under full attack” even then.
The vice president signaled his candid role most strongly when he said a day after the draft opinion expired in May: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to arm the use of the law against women, we say, how dare you?”
She then used the following weeks to argue that Roe’s undermining of Wade could soon erase other key privacy rights – the same topic she raised during Cavanaugh’s hearing.
Harris says many states seeking a total ban on abortion could limit in vitro fertilization if lawmakers say human life begins with fertilization. They could ban contraceptive methods, including intrauterine devices and morning-after pills, she said.
Law enforcement can verify data collected from millions of women who use menstrual monitoring apps or those who search the Internet for abortions in other states, the vice president said.
Also on the map, Harris argues, is the legalization of gay marriage, noting that countries with the strictest abortion laws often have previous LGBTQ bans that the Supreme Court can revive. Once these rights fall, according to the argument, the right to vote may be next. She called a recent meeting with privacy experts to discuss the issue.
“This slippery slope is really slippery,” said one of the participants, Jennifer Weiss-Wolfe, a women’s and democracy assistant at the Brennan Center for Nonprofit Justice in New York. “Right now we’re going down it.”
Michelle Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told attendees to prepare for the “coming of a new Jane Crowe” as efforts to curb abortion began to mimic outdated laws that once sanctioned overt discrimination against blacks.
Danenfelser objected that Harris and others were exaggerating, saying the current Supreme Court was “least likely to do what she says.” They believe in the rule of law. “
“It aims to scare people and build a coalition on the other side beyond the issue of abortion,” Danenfelser said.
Harris’s office says she is indeed building a coalition, but this will be one of those people who believe that Rowe’s effects against Wade far outweigh abortion, and not just for women. To help achieve this point, Harris recently met with religious leaders in Los Angeles, noting that “supporting Rowe against Wade and all she represents does not mean giving up your beliefs.”
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