Jill Filipovic writes:

Of all the reasons Kamala Harris is better equipped than Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump in November—her relative youth, the fact that she’s a former prosecutor challenging a convicted felon—her biggest advantage may be her record on abortion. Harris served as the Biden administration’s de facto advocate for reproductive rights; it is her voice, not Biden’s, that’s been loudest in objecting to abortion bans and conservative efforts to curtail IVF and contraception. According to the White House, she is the only vice president to have paid an official visit to an abortion clinic. As a senator, she famously grilled the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on abortion, asking him, “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” (He could not.)

As California’s attorney general, Harris investigated the anti-abortion activists who pretended to be researchers from a biologics company and illegally recorded videos that were edited to suggest that Planned Parenthood sold fetal parts. (After Harris left the AG’s office for the Senate, her successor brought criminal charges, and Planned Parenthood eventually won more than $2 million in damages from a lawsuit against the activists.) It also doesn’t hurt that Harris is running against a notorious misogynist who selected for his running mate a man who said as recently as 2022 that he would support a nationwide abortion ban.

In the tiny sliver of time in which she’s been the potential presidential nominee, Harris has already reenergized Democratic voters, especially abortion-rights advocates. Laudatory press statements have been issued by abortion-rights groups including Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL) and EMILY’s List, which is planning to donate millions to her campaign. If Harris is the nominee, Democrats will have the opportunity to make reproductive choice the leading issue of the 2024 campaign. And that might be enough to win. [Continue reading…]