Vice President Kamala Harris promised “more action” on abortion during a meeting with a coalition of civil rights and reproductive rights groups on Monday, according to a new report.
The meeting came two months after the groups pressed President Biden for a meeting with them as well as “continued leadership” after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The Reverend Al Sharpton told Politico Playbook that Harris didn’t go into specifics during a 90 minute closed-door meeting with the group leaders but said “there would be more action, and it would be a priority.”
The abortion rate among black women in the U.S. is almost five times higher than that of white women, according to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute. In Al Sharpton’s home town of New York City, more black babies have been aborted in recent years than have been born.
The report adds that Harris suggested abortion will be a key factor in the midterms and promised the Biden administration will continue raising the importance of the issue.
Harris told attendees that the fight over abortion must be made relevant to all voters, according to the report. She suggested the Court’s decision overturning Roe is just the start of an effort to repeal Americans’ privacy rights.
Democrats have latched on to a part of Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization where he wrote that the Court “should reconsider” its decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a right to contraception, privacy in the bedroom, and same-sex marriage, respectively.
Thomas’s reasoning was that the Court’s majority found that a right to abortion was not a form of “liberty” protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. He said the Court therefore had a duty to “correct the error” in the other three precedents, which relied upon the same legal reasoning as Roe. He wrote that after “overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions” protected the rights established in the three cases.
Meanwhile, Harris reportedly responded positively to a suggestion to use pop culture to connect with voters on the issue.
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, told the vice president that poop culture was “one of the missing pieces.” She explained that the Starz series P-Valley about a Delta strip club recently had an episode featuring a young girl’s efforts to get an abortion at Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, which was loosely based on the clinic at the heart of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Ahead of the closed-door meeting, Harris told reporters: “We know with the Supreme Court having made the decision in Dobbs to take a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America, from the women of America, has created a health crisis in America.”
“It has highlighted the fact that as we all know, we must be vigilant and we must stand should-to-shoulder to ensure that every voice is represented in a way that allows them equal access to all that they need to thrive,” she said.
Harris previously came under fire in July when she compared abortion bans to slavery in that they both are “claiming ownership over human bodies.”
“It’s important to note that to support a woman’s ability, not her government, but her to make that decision does not require anyone to abandon their faith or their beliefs,” Harris said in a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
“It just requires us to agree the government shouldn’t be making that decision for her,” she added. “And think about it, for the first time in generations, the United States Supreme Court, the highest court of our land, the former court of Thurgood Marshall, took a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America, from the women of America.”