Here's Kamala Harris's Plan To Protect Roe V. Wade From Anti-Choice Lawmakers

By Lauren Rearick


On Tuesday, May 28, Senator Kamala Harris unveiled her plan to protect people’s reproductive rights and autonomy by way of what she’s calling the Reproductive Rights Act. The Senator, who is now running to earn the nomination for the Democratic party’s 2020 presidential candidate, unveiled the plan while in a MSNBC Town Hall.


As CBS notes, her act would specifically target locations that “have a history of passing legislation that is designed to prevent or limit” someone’s access to reproductive healthcare, like states with restrictive TRAP laws that aim to quota how much care physicians can allocate their patients, and the ways in which they must administer that care. If the RRA were to be law, areas that passed anti-abortion measures in the last 25 years could be unable to pass or enact new anti-abortion laws without the prior approval of the Department of Justice; per BuzzFeed, this is directly counter to the way in which agencies are tasked with proving that legislation is unconstitutional right after it has been signed into law.


The plan comes as lawmakers continue to introduce a increasing number of anti-abortion measures that directly challenge the precedent set by Roe V. Wade, a 1973 ruling from the United States Supreme Court that gave someone the constitutional right to pick abortion. Lawmakers in states like Alabama and Ohio have already passed anti-abortion measures in 2019, while other lawmakers in South Carolina, Maryland, and Louisiana are reportedly considering similar legislation; Offered Parenthood observed a 63 percent increase in the introduction of anti-abortion laws In the
U.S. Since 2018.


At the town hall, Harris said it’s clear that the “ability to have access to reproductive health is under attack in America.” She asked for politicians and voters to imagine what consequences anti-abortion laws might have, and pointed to “back-alley” abortions that occurred before the passage of Roe vs. Wade as proof that conservative lawmakers will never have the ability to eradicate abortion entirely; their laws would simply make abortions more tough and dangerous to obtain.


“The government should not be in the organization of taking those decisions away,” she added.


Harris has advocated against anti-abortion measures while in her time in the Senate. Her announcement comes right after she unveiled a plan to possibly close the gender wage gap, reported a potential ban on AR-15 fashion weapons, and shared her idea to simplify the student cash advance process.


Other Democratic hopefuls have expressed similar support for abortion rights; if elected president, Senator Cory Booker intends to make an office in the White Home that would analyse ways to protect abortion rights and reproductive health. All nevertheless two Democratic hopefuls (Mayor Bill de Blasio and Representative Tulsi Gabbard) confirmed support of codifying Roe vs. Wade, an action that would let the ruling to be and stay law while in federal courts, even if the Supreme Court determined to overturn its 1973 ruling.