A lot has happened in the American political landscape over the past few days, making it hard to catch up.
As you probably know, President Joe Biden just announced that he will not be seeking re-election before throwing his endorsement behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Plenty of other big names in the Democratic party have done the same, making it look like Harris will end up being the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election.
With that, it’s understandable to have questions about where Harris stands on key issues for women. Here’s what she’s said publicly over the years about a range of topics that matter to women.
She has championed reproductive rights.
Harris’ support for reproductive rights goes back years. When she was a senator, she co-sponsored legislation that would have banned certain restrictions on a state level, like requiring doctors to perform certain tests or needing doctors to have hospital admitting privileges to provide abortions.
During her presidential run in 2019, Harris said that states that have a history of restricting abortion access in violation of Roe v. Wade should have pre-clearance for new abortion laws, per The New York Times. Meaning, the laws would not have to be federally approved before they could take effect.
In March, Harris made what is believed to be the first official visit to an abortion clinic by a president or vice president when she went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, per CNN.
“The reason I’m here is because this is a health care crisis,” Harris said. “Part of this health care crisis is the clinics like this that have had to shut down and what that has meant to leave no options with any reasonable geographic area for so many women who need this essential care.”
Harris pushed to make black maternal health a national priority.
In 2021, Vice President Harris hosted the first federal Maternal Health Day of Action at the White House, where she issued a call to improve health outcomes for parents and infants in the U.S.
“More women are facing death because of childbirth than in any other developed nation,” Harris told journalists during a call on during Black Maternal Health Week in 2022, per NBC News. “We are looking at the likelihood that Black women are three times more likely to die in connection with childbirth, that Native women are twice as likely to die, that rural women are one and a half times more likely to die.”
She’s called for caps on prescription drug pricing.
Harris shared a proposal in 2019 to help ensure that the U.S. doesn’t pay more than other countries for prescription medications. That would cap the U.s. drug price at an average of other developed countries.
“As president, she’ll require pharmaceutical companies to set fair prices for prescription drugs and tax profits made from abusive drug prices at a rate of 100 percent,” her campaign website used to say, per Stat News.
She advocated for a major Medicare expansion.
When she ran for president in 2019, Harris championed “Medicare for All,” which was a single-payer insurance proposal.
“There is perhaps no more complicated or more personal issue for Americans than health care,” she wrote on Medium in 2019.
On the topic of Medicare, Harris wrote, “let’s expand it to all Americans and give everyone access to comprehensive health care. Medicare for All will cover all medically necessary services, including emergency room visits, doctor visits, vision, dental, hearing aids, mental health, and substance use disorder treatment, and comprehensive reproductive health care services. It will also allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices.”
She fought against healthcare consolidation.
Harris was once California’s attorney general and, during her tenure, she fought against consolidation in the health industry for fear it would increase drug prices, per Politico.
Her mom researched breast cancer.
Harris’ mother, Shyamala Harris, was a leading breast cancer researcher who worked at UC Berkeley, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin. She was eventually part of the Special Commission on Breast Cancer, according to her obituary.
As a child, Harris often accompanied her mother to work on the weekends, visiting her mom’s lab, per NPR.
Shyamala “made substantial contributions to the field of hormones and breast cancer, publishing her research in countless journals and receiving numerous honors. Her discovery sparked a plethora of advancements regarding the role of progesterone and its cellular receptor in breast biology and cancer,” her obituary said.
After her death, Shyamala’s family asked that people donate to Breast Cancer Action in lieu of sending flowers.
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.