Harris says she would get rid of the filibuster to restore abortion rights nationwide
On Sept. 23, during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Today,” Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris discussed her plan to restore protections for Americans’ right to reproductive freedom by eliminating the filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
Under the filibuster rule, most legislation requires a 60-vote supermajority to pass in the Senate instead of a 51-vote simple majority.
Harris said she would support eliminating the filibuster as a way to ensure there were enough votes to establish a federal constitutional right to abortion.
“I’ve been very clear, I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio host Kate Archer Kent.
Harris is not the only Democrat to criticize the filibuster.
In 2020, while delivering the eulogy for the Civil Rights icon, John Lewis, President Barack Obama called the filibuster a “Jim Crow relic.”
Michigan Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is currently running for the open Senate seat in Michigan, has said the filibuster “as it is now being used needs to go.”
“And I think that there’s, I’ve already said, certainly on issues of democracy, changing and affecting our democracy, things like voting rights, we have to be able to have an up-or-down vote,” Slotkin said. “The idea that a couple, a handful of senators can just stop bills from even coming to the floor and getting an up-or-down vote, I just don’t think that makes sense.”
Former President Donald Trump told rallygoers in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 24 that if he is reelected, women “will no longer be in danger. You’re not going to be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Trump has continued to boast about his role in the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe, a decision that is broadly unpopular. A recent CNN poll found that 65% of Americans opposed the reversal, while 69% of Americans would support a federal law protecting the right to abortion.
According to a New York Times/Siena College poll taken in August, abortion is a top issue for voters.
A Gallup poll conducted in May found that 32% of registered voters said the issue of abortion was a primary motivator, and said they would not vote for a candidate for major office who did not share their views on the issue.
After Trump’s recent rally in Pennsylvania, Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, told the New York Times that “women know better.”
“He tries to tell us what to think and what we care about. We will vote like our lives depend on it this November,” Chitika said.
