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Where is Kamala’s plan for women? Neither party takes reproductive rights seriously

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)


September 2, 2024   5 mins

While Joe Biden found it hard to even say the A-word, Kamala Harris has always known that reproductive rights could be a winning issue for the Left come November — hence her reproductive freedom tour earlier this year. At the DNC, she warned that, if Trump were elected, the precarious state of reproductive freedoms could fall apart completely. But if she were elected, Harris promised, she would protect women’s right to choose.

The Democrats know what a powerful issue this is, driving turnout and bringing in donations. “When abortion is on the ballot, we win,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the pro-choice organisation NARAL. And yet, Harris has yet to put forth an actionable plan to restore access to abortion across the United States. Her raft of vague promises to do something for women are familiar for Democratic voters — each of their party’s nominees, from Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, has promised to protect reproductive rights. The question remains: does the Harris administration have any intention of following through on her pledge to secure those rights?

The appeal of the issue hasn’t escaped Donald Trump, who, has made several contradictory statements about his plan for reproductive rights. Just this week he voiced support for the expansion of access to abortion in his home state of Florida — a statement his campaign was swift to retract and deny. He also said he planned to require insurance companies to cover fertility treatments like IVF in full.

Ever since the Supreme Court’s intention to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision was leaked in 2022, the issue has powerfully motivated voters, even in strongly Republican areas. In Montana, for example, abortion is legal until the 24th week of pregnancy, but the Republican governor and legislature have repeatedly tried and failed to pass laws to ban terminations. In response, a recent push to ensure that abortion rights were safeguarded from such interference was so popular that the petition to get the issue on to November’s ballot received more than twice the number of signatures necessary.

And Montana is only one of nine states currently organising constitutional amendments and initiatives for the autumn election. Kansas — also traditionally Republican — has already passed similar protections, and also did so with surprisingly large margins. It’s not clear if these attempts are enough to drive typically Republican voters to support a Democratic presidential candidate, but the state-level ballot initiatives have caused higher than usual voter turnout. And as polls are spelling out, Democrats, women and younger voters are particularly likely to see abortion as a motivating factor in their vote.

With this in mind, Trump’s sudden change of tune does prompt one question: could these pro-choice voters be a more important voting bloc for him than those on the religious Right who were instrumental in electing him in 2016? Certainly, the reproductive rights platform does seem to be shifting things this election cycle. In Texas, for example, Greg Abbott has seen his disapproval ratings rise since passing restrictions on abortion, and conversely, Marilyn Lands, who campaigned on a strongly pro-choice platform in conservative Alabama, has made headway by running on a strongly pro-choice message.

Why is this? One explanation is that while elements of the Right have successfully campaigned on the more edgy “family values” matters, against things such as transgender healthcare for children and the teaching of critical race theory in schools, when it addressed more popular issues, such as the availability of IVF and gay marriage, it’s possible they started alarming some of the more moderate voters in their midst. There hasn’t been a major election since the Alabama Supreme Court made its controversial ruling about IVF treatments, so how big an effect this will have on voter turnout and support for political parties is so far speculative.

But equally, if the Democrats were to pick up centrists and undecideds by promising to reverse the damage done to reproductive rights, can they actually be trusted to deliver on their promises, given their past record? The general understanding of American political parties is that the Democrats are good for reproductive freedoms and the Republicans want to bring about some sort of Handmaid’s Tale dystopia. However, if we look past the language politicians use when they’re trying to get elected, and instead at what happens once they achieve office and have the power to pass legislation, we see a slightly different divide.

Since the Eighties, the Christian Right’s stance has evolved from being mostly apolitical to pushing rigid positions on the subject, leaving it hard for a pro-choice Republican politician to now gain any real support in the party. Susan Cullman has spoken recently about how marginalised someone who supports abortion rights can be in the party. More recently, only a handful of Republican governors promised to preserve abortion rights in their states — Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire — and all of them were or are leading states that tend to vote Democrat in Presidential elections. If Trump’s Republicans are looking to bring a more moderate position to women’s rights issues, there is a lot of ground yet to cover.

At the same time, however, there is precious little evidence to support the idea that Democrats are devoted to protecting reproductive rights, beyond appointing pro-choice justices to the Supreme Court. Not only have Democratic presidents failed since the Seventies to reinforce abortion rights — they have also failed to push back on legislation that has shut clinics down, dragged their feet in approving the drug regimen once known as RU-486 for administering abortions, and they have not pursued changing the law that forbids federal funds — such as Medicaid coverage — from paying for abortion services.

“There is precious little evidence to support the idea that Democrats are devoted to protecting reproductive rights.”

Over the years, such moves have restricted access to reproductive rights, making them available only to those who can afford them. The party thus seems to be cynically paying lip-service to those women who are voting for them. After the Dobbs decision in 2023, Joe Biden tweeted that “it’s time to restore Roe v. Wade once and for all”. It’s now a year and a half later, and there was no follow-up as to what that might mean, how Democrats might go about it, and of course no actual restoration.

It’s also important to remember that reproductive rights extend to more than simply access to abortion. And nor have these wider issues been addressed by the Democrats. These are things such as the maternal mortality rate — which is rising at an alarming speed and disproportionately affecting black and poor — and the difficulty rural communities face in accessing prenatal health care services. These are all issues that affect the working class, the vulnerable and the marginalised — the Democrats’ former constituency. Yet no one in the party seems interested in discussing them, let alone other hot-button issues such as surrogacy or subsidised childcare.

Instead, on both sides of the political aisle, all the focus is on abortion — but only in rhetoric and not in specific policy. It’s all very well for a presidential candidate to come up with a jaunty slogan like Harris’s “We are not going back”, but the time for pretty speeches and fiery rhetoric is over. What women need is a plan.


Jessa Crispin is the author of three books, most recently Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto. 

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Bret Larson
Bret Larson
3 months ago

Maybe if the give the vote to fetus it will change.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
3 months ago

What is her plan for men?

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
3 months ago

Pay up and shut up.

Carol Staines
Carol Staines
3 months ago

my first thought exactly.

Arkadian Arkadian
Arkadian Arkadian
3 months ago

In answer to the title, does she know what a woman is? There are more fundamental questions to be answered by her first.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago

Abortion has no place under the umbrella of “reproductive rights”, that chilling Orwellian euphemism.
Abortion is anti-reproduction. It’s killing a baby to ensure reproduction doesn’t happen. Reproductive rights should include the right of the baby, the innocent life, to LIVE. How have we lost sight of this?
Women don’t need a “plan” on how to perpetuate this senseless act. They need to understand that killing babies isn’t ok.
Yes, there are terrible reasons people get pregnant. But killing an innocent baby is not the answer to any of these tragedies, and may the Lord help anyone who thinks it is.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago

And before anyone chimes in, yes: I believe the one circumstance it’s justified is if the mother’s life is in imminent danger and termination is the ONLY way to save the mother’s life. But that doesn’t even constitute an abortion in the typical definition. Most abortions, the vast majority, are done for reasons of CONVENIENCE. Let that sink in. Killing babies for convenience.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
3 months ago

If you don’t believe in abortion then nobody is forcing you to have one, however last time I checked America was a democracy and polls consistently show a majority of voters favour having abortion available during the first trimester.
Why do you feel you should be able to force your views onto others when you are in the minority?

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

“Right is right, even when no one is doing it. Wrong is wrong, even when everyone is doing it.” – attributed to St. Augustine
If you appreciated that the “fetus” is a baby with unique human DNA, made in the image of God, you would not frame this issue as a matter of personal preference. The folly of liberalism is thinking everything comes down to individual choice. Pregnancy, with the baby utterly dependent on the mother, shatters that illusion, showing how we’re all connected, and that we cannot opt in and out of everything like mobile phone contracts.
Also, I could put it to you: “If you don’t like murder, then no one is forcing you to do it. Why are you trying to force your views onto others?” It’s absurd. May God help us all.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
3 months ago

That would be the same God that gives children cancer and other horrible diseases for no reason I assume? Why should I care what that lunatic thinks? And which passages specifically mention that abortion is wrong in the Bible?
Right and wrong are merely opinions, largely decided by our upbringing and surroundings which is why their very definition vary from place to place and people to people. To say that only your definition of right is the correct one and you should be able to enforce that onto others despite that opinion only being shared by a minority of your fellow countrymen is the height of arrogance in my opinion.

Lynette McDougall
Lynette McDougall
3 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

The only text in the Bible that relates to a pregnant woman losing her baby is Exodus 21:22 – “If men strive and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no misfortune follow, he shall be surely punished according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.”

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

If ethics are indeed “merely opinions”, then:
1) you have to be comfortable saying the Holocaust was only subjectively bad. Are you? On that note, you condemned God for things like cancer, implying that they’re bad — but isn’t that just, like, your opinion, man?
2) you have also admitted that your own assessment of ethics is itself merely an opinion, in which case there is absolutely no reason to listen to anything you say. You have, after all, argued yourself out of the impossibility of any knowledge.
So, why should I agree with you, random bunch of cells making meaningless predetermined noise? Or maybe, just maybe, there is truth, there is beauty, there is goodness, and there’s no adequate explanation for any of these things other than accepting their ultimate origin: the mind of God.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 months ago

Of course there is truth. 2+2=4 is truth, the fact water boils at 100 degrees is truth.
However nothing around the abortion debate is truth, merely opinions and it’s wrong to treat them as anything else.
You can choose to believe that everything around us was the work of some lad sat on a cloud, but it’s certainly not truth as any of us understand the word, merely an opinion based on something you’ve read in a book. I happen to think it’s a load of bo**ocks but again that’s not the truth, merely a guess based on the information I have available to me.
To claim that your opinions carry more weight than those of your opponents around abortion (often women who actually have to do the hard work and carry the thing) is the height of arrogance

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Moral statements are nothing more than opinions but these opinions are arrogant in your opinion and arrogant opinions are bad in your opinion because arrogance is bad in your opinion?
You don’t want the “lad sitting on a cloud” but you seem to be a lad on a branch with a saw.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
2 months ago

Sorry to pile on, but if you asked the population of the country if cancer was bad, they would overwhelmingly say yes. If you asked them if the Holocaust was bad, they would overwhelmingly say yes. However, abortion is a bit different. It’s closer, and that probably leads people to be more strongly opinionated about it than others. Also, religion plays a HUGE aspect in how people view this issue. It will never be something that people agree on, which is why it’s nice that we can democratically vote for it.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
3 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

“Why do you feel you should be able to force your views ”
You don’t. That’s why the majority of US states, constituting most of the US population, allows some degree of first trimester abortions.

It’s the pro “choice” camp who wants to force their views – by removing the right of individual states (and their people) to decide, forcing a supreme court mandated decision across states.

And also by forcibly allowing abortion upto full terms.
Which incidentally, the majority of Americans are opposed to, even though they support first trimester abortion rights. But, several “progressive” states now allow that.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 months ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

If every State had a referendum tomorrow about allowing abortion up to the first trimester, I’d wager it would win in all 50 states. When states propose punishing women for travelling to a different state in order to have a termination then to me that’s morally repugnant

Sylvia Volk
Sylvia Volk
3 months ago

... the more edgy “family values” …
The writer goes on to say that IVF and gay marriage are more mainstream issues than family values. Really. Are they even issues? Is somebody running for office with a promise of eliminating in vitro fertilization and gay marriage? I guess if you can swallow that, you could maybe try to swallow the idea that “family values” are edgy.
Those controversial family values!

General Store
General Store
3 months ago

What’s a woman?

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
3 months ago

There was general agreement that the Roe vs. Wade decision had an idadequate legal framework. The Supreme Court decided that the law around abortion should be decided by each state. This is not “Overturning Roe vs. Wade” as the writer claims. It is changing the jurisdiction from the federal to the state legislatures. This is a highly contentious issue, and it is appropriate that decision making should be brought closer to the people. .

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
3 months ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

You can’t win that argument against “progressives” .

Suggestions that it’s just about being aligned with the constitution, or allowing the “people” to decide for our superiors as ridiculous to them.
Or pointing out that Abortion is legal in about 38 out of 50 states – most of the big states, so 80% of the US by population – doesn’t help.

The idea is for upper class women – in a highly gynocentric society – to be “victims” and have everything their way.

That’s why, for instance, they will shriek about the “patriarchy ” while trying to force Roe v Wade on the 50% of women against it, while ignoring the fact that 7 out of 8 Roe Wade judges were men. Or insult men by saying that they have no say, even though they are marginally more likely to support abortion rights.

And it isn’t even about helping women, which is why there is very little discussion about, say, providing simple, subsidised travel facilities for women in non abortion states.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

Hard to have a plan for women when you don’t know what a woman is?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago

What women need is a plan.
Women already have a plan. It’s called agency. They can decide whether or not to sleep with someone. They can use birth control. They can demand that their partners also use it. In short, women already have reproductive rights that govt can neither bestow nor take away.
The stale euphemism of “reproductive freedom” excludes every single decision that women make except abortion. It essentially reduces females to the level of breeding stock. Stop looking to govt officials for answers or direction. Each of us has free will. Exercise it.

Tony Price
Tony Price
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Except – not all women choose to have sex – quite a few have it forced upon them. And not all can choose birth control as some are coerced not to, and there are Republicans wanting to abolish birth control anyway. And what about a foetus which is known not be able to go to term or be born as a viable being? Who exactly here is reducing “females to the level of breeding stock”? Sounds like you dude!

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
3 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

“quite a few have it forced upon them. ”
And hardly any US states stop you from abortion in such cases.

“not all can choose birth control as some are coerced not to”
Ah, Schrödinger’s feminism again.

“Republicans wanting to abolish birth control anyway. ”
How many Republican states have abolished birth control?

Tony Price
Tony Price
2 months ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Unbelievable! I was responding to the statement that all women have ‘agency’ – obviously a complete falsehood. “hardly any US States” – indeed so some make it impossible.

A true statement – not all women can choose birth control. Apart from which, no contraceptive method is 100% effective.

No states have abolished birth control, but that is not what I have said.

Chris Milburn
Chris Milburn
3 months ago

What an incredibly collectivist idea. “Women” need a plan. And apparently the author, being a woman, gets to speak on behalf of all women.

Graff von Frankenheim
Graff von Frankenheim
3 months ago

Well, Kamala is taking this issue seriously…..by wearing a completely off-putting pant suit all the time just like those other two deplorable women Clinton and Merkel. No man would in his right mind go near these Teutonic sisters. No need for reproductive rights if your sex appeal has gone into negative digits..

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
3 months ago

Pro-choice advocates know that rhetoric is one thing but delivering abortion legislation is another. Child to father who is an elected politician: “What did you do today, Daddy?”. “I voted to make abortion legal”. Most Democratic politicians, other than the fanatics, don’t want to do that. They want the Supreme Court to do their dirty work for them. I’m not familiar with the issues Ms.Crispin refers to in the second last paragraph of her piece.

J Dunne
J Dunne
3 months ago

Feminists, in their typically narcissistic way, ignore the fact that there are three human beings involved in a pregnancy.

The baby’s entire life and the impact on the rest of the father’s life are made irrelevant by reducing the entire issue down to the nine month period of pregnancy and childbirth.

It’s entirely about them and their obsession with victimhood.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 months ago

“Reproductive rights” is a euphemism. It means: “the right kill the baby in a woman’s belly”. You’re welcome!