Anti-abortion organizations attack Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy

Organizations that support restrictions on abortion are publicly opposing Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Following President Joe Biden’s decision to leave the 2024 race, Harris has received endorsements from enough delegates to the Democratic National Convention to secure the presidential nomination. The convention will be held in August.

Following the announcement of Biden’s decision and Harris’ entry in the race, several right-wing advocacy groups released criticism of Harris, who supports abortion rights.

“While Joe Biden has trouble saying the word abortion, Kamala Harris shouts it,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a July 21 statement. The organization said it was engaged in a campaign to persuade millions of voters to support anti-abortion candidates in key swing states.

On the same day, another anti-abortion group, National Right To Life, described Harris as an “abortion apologist who represents the extreme pro-abortion position of the Democratic Party.” The group criticized Harris for her support of the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that would have changed federal law to restore abortion rights as affirmed by the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

When that measure failed to secure passage in 2022, Harris told reporters, “This vote clearly suggests that the Senate is not where the majority of Americans are on this issue.”

Students for Life of America and Concerned Women for America, organizations that also oppose abortion, came out in opposition to Harris’ candidacy as well.

Harris reaffirmed her support for abortion rights at a July 23 campaign rally in Wisconsin.

“We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris said. (43:09)

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has a track record of opposing abortion rights. Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, were members of the 6-3 majority that decided the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, overturning Roe.

Following the decision in Dobbs, Trump said he supported individual states having the power to pass abortion bans, which had been superseded for decades under Roe. In 2018, as president, Trump said he supported a 20-week abortion ban. Previously, when campaigning in 2016, he had said, “There has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. Mother Jones reported that his campaign retracted the statement a few hours after Trump said it.

In an April interview with Time magazine, Trump said he would leave it to individual states to decide whether to prosecute women for having an abortion or to monitor women’s pregnancies.A poll conducted in May 2023 by Gallup found that 69% of respondents said that abortion should “generally be legal” during the first three months of pregnancy.