Harris backs ending filibuster for law to codify a national right to abortion

In one of her strongest statements on restoring a national right to abortion as it existed under the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973, Vice President Kamala Harris has said she would support eliminating the filibuster in the U.S. Senate in order to bring back federal protections for a woman’s right to an abortion as they existed under Roe.

“I’ve been very clear, I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio’s Kate Archer Kent in an interview airing Sept. 24.

The Senate’s filibuster rule requires a 60-vote threshold to end debate and proceed to a floor vote for most legislation.

Harris’ promise depends on the Democrats maintaining their slim Senate majority, currently at 51-49. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is politically independent but caucuses with Democrats, has indicated his support for having an exception to the filibuster for the abortion proposal. However, current political forecasts indicate Republicans are favored to flip control of the Senate Nov. 5, although a few races remain within the margin of error.

In a statement provided to OSV News, Jeanne Mancini, president of the national March for Life organization, said, “Harris’ extreme record on the issue of abortion should frighten even pro-choice voters, not to mention vulnerable mothers who face unexpected pregnancies. She is clear about her support for unlimited abortion, but now she’s calling for the elimination of the filibuster in order to advance the most radical abortion policy the United States has ever seen and one which is totally out of touch with mainstream America.”

Harris’ Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, has campaigned on leaving abortion regulation to the states and not the federal government — including promising to veto a hypothetical national abortion ban — following the 2022 Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

He told a rally audience in Indiana, Pa., that “women will be happy, healthy, confident and free” if he is elected to a second term in office.

“You will no longer be thinking about abortion, it’s all they talk about, abortion, because we’ve done something that nobody else could have done,” he said.

Trump is also running on an IVF-mandate, where he will require government or insurance companies to cover “all costs associated” with in vitro fertilization, a expensive artificial reproduction technique opposed by the Catholic Church that involves lab overproduction of human embryos, the majority of which are either destroyed, frozen or lost in the process of getting to a live birth.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe decision with Dobbs in 2022 put abortion laws in the hands of the states. While the decision allowed abortion restrictions in 22 states that go beyond what was possible under Roe, nationally abortion numbers have jumped since Dobbs.

Abortions of unborn children rose 11% in 2023 over 2020, the last year for which the Guttmacher Institute has comprehensive abortion estimates, and a full year following Dobbs. Guttmacher, which tracks this data for the abortion industry, notes the increase is part of an upward trend for abortion that began in 2017 after a nearly three decade decline.

No legal elective abortions were performed in Wisconsin, considered one of the battleground states in the presidential race, for nearly 15 months after Dobbs. Trump won the state in 2016; Joe Biden took it in 2020.

Abortions resumed in Wisconsin after a state judge in 2023 ruled that a 19th-century state law banned feticide — the death of an unborn child following an attack on a pregnant woman — rather than abortion. The state Supreme Court is considering two challenges to the law.

Harris has called state abortion bans immoral, while attempting to frame the discussion in libertarian terms for religious voters. One of her often-repeated lines in her stump speeches has been, “Let us agree one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do.”

The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death, and as such, opposes direct abortion. Church officials in the U.S. welcomed the Dobbs decision as an opportunity to advance legal protections for unborn children, while also reiterating the church’s concern for both mother and child and calling for policies that increase support for those living in poverty or other causes that can push women toward having an abortion.

Ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion protections into state law are on the Nov. 5 ballot in Nebraska, Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, New York, Nevada and South Dakota. Voters in Vermont, California, Michigan and Ohio have already enacted abortion access protections in their state constitutions.

A survey by the Pew Research Center — conducted Aug. 26- Sept. 2, prior to the Trump-Harris debate — found 52 percent of Catholic voters slightly more likely to support Trump, with 47 percent backing Harris; however, the partisan divide jumped when divided by race. White Catholics said they would support Trump 61 percent to 38 percent, while Hispanic Catholics said they would support Harris 65 percent to 34 percent.

Speaking with reporters on Sept. 13 aboard his flight from Singapore to Rome, Pope Francis criticized both Trump and Harris for espousing positions “against life” and with respect to the candidates, he said Catholics would have to “choose the lesser evil.” Specifically, he called Trump’s plan for mass deportation of migrants a “grave sin” and compared abortion, which Harris advocates, to an “assassination.”

The Second Vatican Council condemns both acts by name in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, “Gaudium et Spes,” listing them among various “infamies” that “poison human society.”

Pope Francis said he would not advise Catholics on how to vote, only that “everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.”

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