Vice President Kamala Harris has made abortion a central subject in her bid for the White Home, pledging to increase and shield girls’s skill to terminate a being pregnant if she’s elected to the nation’s highest workplace.

The vp’s guarantees come because the nation nonetheless reels from the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which assured the constitutional proper to abortion within the U.S. for the previous half a century. Since that ruling, 13 states have utterly banned abortions.

“One doesn’t should abandon their religion or deeply held beliefs to easily agree the federal government shouldn’t be telling her what to do along with her physique,” Harris stated throughout her closing remarks on Tuesday night at Ellipse garden in Washington. In response, the gang of greater than 60,000 supporters cheered loudly.

However what may Harris really do to assist abortion entry in a post-Roe panorama? The query is central to a key dynamic underway within the presidential election: A partisan gender divide with few precedents in trendy politics.

An October NBC News poll confirmed a gender hole of 30 share factors between Harris and Republican Donald Trump, with male voters breaking for Trump by 16% and feminine voters for Harris by 14%.

This break up between female and male voters is inextricably tied to the problem of abortion. In line with the ultimate New York Times election poll, abortion and the economic system had been tied amongst feminine probably voters as their prime subject. Amongst all registered voters, women and men, solely the economic system ranked increased than abortion in its affect on voter decisions.

If Harris had been elected president, nonetheless, she would probably discover it very tough to revive the suitable to an abortion nationwide, stated Alina Salganicoff, a senior vp and the director of the Ladies’s Well being Coverage Program at KFF.

Even so, she stated, a Harris administration may enhance the supply of drugs abortions and, crucially, it may struggle Republican and activist makes an attempt to additional restrict reproductive rights.

Harris has stated she would signal a invoice from Congress reestablishing abortion rights, however it’s unlikely such laws would attain the Senate’s present 60-vote threshold. A invoice in Could 2022 that may successfully codify a right to abortion failed within the Senate, with a 49-51 vote. All Republicans opposed the measure.

Some Democratic lawmakers, together with Harris, have voiced assist for eliminating the filibuster within the Senate, which might permit payments to move with a easy majority as a substitute of the 60 votes at present required to finish debate over laws and advance it within the 100-member Senate.

“I have been very clear, I feel we must always eradicate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the purpose the place 51 votes could be what we have to really put again in legislation the protections for reproductive freedom,” Harris stated in September throughout an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.

It is uncertain Democrats will secure even a simply majority within the Senate this November, which might be essential to undo the filibuster, stated Mary Ziegler, a authorized historian of the U.S. abortion debate. Although, that would change within the midterms, Ziegler stated.

Even with sufficient votes, some Democrats might fear that reducing the Senate voting threshold may backfire on them and abortion entry, she stated.

“Democrats traditionally have been anxious about that as a result of then they do not have instruments to defeat a brand new abortion ban if Republicans had been to move one,” Ziegler stated.

Harris supports a repeal of the Hyde Modification, a Congressional rider which limits federal spending on abortions to instances of rape, incest or life-threatening pregnancies. On account of the restriction, girls on Medicaid will be compelled to pay out-of-pocket for an abortion, which may price $600 or more in some cases. The availability impacts low-income girls and girls of shade essentially the most, specialists say.

“Harris has been actually vocal about supporting the repeal of the Hyde Modification,” Ziegler stated.

However as soon as once more, “she’d want Congress” to take action, Ziegler stated. “If Democrats do not management Congress, it may be exhausting.”

Nonetheless, she added, “Having a president pushing for it could be vital.”

Harris may additionally pursue a number of paths to make remedy abortions extra out there to individuals. In 2023, remedy abortions accounted for 63% of abortions within the U.S., an increase from 53% in 2020, in line with the Guttmacher Institute.

“There are probably many causes for the rise, together with the comparatively current availability of abortion remedy by telehealth,” Salganicoff at KFF stated, including that Harris may search for extra methods to make the capsules accessible.

A Harris administration wouldn’t implement The Comstock Act, a controversial federal legislation handed in 1873 that bans the mailing of obscene matter. Within the conservative governing blueprint Undertaking 2025, which former President Donald Trump has tried to disavow, the authors call for using the Victorian-era law as another kind of abortion ban, prohibiting utilizing the mail to distribute abortion capsules and different abortion-related supplies.

“They’re arguing that if Deliberate Parenthood orders a scalpel for a medical provide firm, that is a federal crime,” Ziegler stated.

No matter who wins the White Home, an anti-abortion group may convey a case to the Supreme Courtroom and persuade the justices that The Comstock Act needs to be utilized as a ban on mailing abortion supplies, Ziegler stated.

However enforcement of that ruling could be left to the U.S. Division of Justice, she stated, and that may be one other space the place Harris may make a distinction.

“A Harris administration would not be capable to change what the Supreme Courtroom is saying, however it may de-prioritize these prosecutions,” Ziegler stated. “The DOJ at all times has restricted assets, and prioritizes some prosecutions over others.”

Harris may additionally oppose efforts by Republicans and anti-abortion teams to invalidate the Meals and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which is used to terminate pregnancies, specialists stated.

Her administration would additionally probably struggle different authorized challenges to additional prohibit abortions, akin to state legal guidelines that ban emergency abortion look after sufferers when their well being is in jeopardy. The Biden administration has argued that depriving individuals of this care violates EMTALA, or the Emergency Medical Therapy & Labor Act. That federal legislation requires hospitals to supply health-preserving remedy to these in want who come into their emergency rooms.

“A number of states with abortion bans solely have a life exception, not one for well being,” Salganicoff stated.

Trump takes credit for the Supreme Courtroom’s resolution to strike down Roe v. Wade, and embraces his position in choosing the three conservative justices who voted in opposition to it. On the marketing campaign path, Trump stated he would not sign a national abortion ban. Nonetheless, some specialists are skeptical of that promise, given the previous president’s document. And federal coverage would probably supersede any handed poll measures, Ziegler stated.

“Conserving entry that already exists could be one of many much less glamorous however essential issues,” Harris may do, Ziegler stated.

Certainly, the vp’s largest affect on abortion entry, ought to she win, could be to forestall the deterioration of rights that’s probably beneath one other Trump administration, Salganicoff stated

“Your query is: ‘What may Harris do?'” she stated. “The query is: What may an administration do that doesn’t consider that abortion entry needs to be protected? They’ll achieve this way more to dismantle entry than as we speak.”