Where the candidates on Harris’s VP short list stand on abortion
By: Gabrielle M. Etzel, originally published July 23, 2024, Washington Examiner
The politicians thought to be top candidates to be Vice President Kamala Harris‘s running mate are all strong supporters of legal abortion and would help Harris to make abortion one of the most prominent campaign topics in the 2024 elections.
Harris had been the spokesperson for abortion rights for the Biden campaign since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, conducting multiple visits to key swing states to tout the Democratic ticket’s support for legal abortion.
The three governors among the top contenders — Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, and North Carolina’s Roy Cooper — have each struggled with Republican majorities in their state legislatures over post-Roe abortion restrictions.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), the only senator among the most common names discussed for Harris’s VP, has a 100% rating on Planned Parenthood’s Congressional Scorecard as of 2021.
Here’s what they each have done in the fight over abortion.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (PA)
Shapiro, a rising star in the Democratic Party, has had his own battles over abortion even the Keystone State has relatively permissive laws, allowing abortion up until the 24th week of pregnancy.
In the immediate aftermath of the overturning of Roe, then-Attorney General Shapiro promised to shield women who came to Pennsylvania from out of state to obtain an abortion.
On the campaign trail in 2022, Shapiro won the divisive 2022 gubernatorial election in part because he vowed to veto any abortion prohibition or limitation that would come out of the majority-Republican state legislature. This was a stark contrast to the Republican challenger, Doug Mastriano, who supported strict gestational age limits on abortion.
Since Democrats won a two-seat majority in the lower chamber, it would be difficult for Republicans to make any change to the Commonwealth’s existing abortion law legislatively.
Shapiro does favor the unpopular policy position of taxpayer-funded abortion, at least in the case of Medicaid.
The commonwealth’s Supreme Court in January ruled on a complex case involving a 1982 law preventing the use of Medicaid funds to cover abortions in the state. The high court ultimately found that the state constitution protects “the fundamental right of a woman to decide whether or not she wants to give birth” and instructed a lower court to rehear the case.
Shapiro last week announced that his administration would not defend the existing law prohibiting Medicaid funds for abortion, saying that the ban “imposes a burden on women that is not sustainable.”
“As Governor, I will always uphold our state’s Constitution and protect a woman’s right to make decisions over her own body and have the health care services she needs,” Shapiro said last Tuesday.
Sen. Mark Kelly
Kelly has been a vocal advocate of abortion rights, co-sponsoring the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have liberalized abortion beyond Roe.
The Women’s Health Protection Act would have created a statutory right to abortion up until fetal viability, between 22 and 24 weeks of gestation. After that point, a doctor could justify an abortion using “good-faith medical judgment” to determine that the procedure is needed
Kelly also had a strong reaction to the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision this April to uphold the 1864 abortion ban, which would have eliminated all exceptions for abortion except to save the life of the mother.
“This disastrous decision sets women’s rights in our state back two centuries and means that Arizona women have now lost the right to an abortion,” said Kelly at the time.
The Civil War-era law was eventually repealed by the state legislature and replaced with a 15-week abortion ban, on which Kelly did not make a public statement.
The senator from Arizona also joined 252 other House and Senate members in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking it to uphold the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and deregulation of the abortion pill mifepristone. Mifepristone is used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States.
Kelly has also joined fellow Senate Democrats in the current battle over in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments, voting in support of preventing states from prohibiting or tightly regulating the procedure.
Gov. Andy Beshear
The 2023 reelection of Beshear, an outspoken Democratic governor in a state with a strict abortion ban, was seen widely as a victory for abortion rights in the second election season following the fall of Roe.
Prior to Roe being overturned, in early 2022, Beshear vetoed a Republican-led bill limiting abortion after 15 weeks of gestation, the point at which a fetus can feel pain. The veto, however, was overridden by a supermajority in the legislature.
But once Roe was overturned in June, the state’s near-total abortion legislation took effect, only allowing exceptions to save the physical health or life of the mother.
On the campaign trail in 2023, Beshear was a sharp critic of the state’s abortion restrictions. He was not pressed by the Republican challenger, Daniel Cameron, on whether he supported abortion post-viability.
Most of Beshear’s public comment and post-Roe campaign record have solely focused on winning rape and incest exceptions, positions that are popular with voters even in deep red states.
Days after his 2023 electoral victory, Beshear set to work with the Republican majority legislature on revising the law to advance these exceptions first.
“My goal is to try to continue to be an adult, to continue to operate in a way that makes people proud and hopefully allows people’s children to watch what we say and what we do,” Beshear told local outlet Kentucky Lantern the day after his reelection.
Gov. Roy Cooper
Cooper, like Beshear, is another Democratic governor working with a Republican-led state legislature.
In 2023, Cooper vetoed the 12-week abortion ban passed by a Republican supermajority in both chambers of the legislature, which overrode his veto four days later. Cooper also lost a challenge to place an injunction on the law, allowing it to take effect this year.
Although it is difficult to pin down whether or not Cooper supports any gestational age limits for abortion, he did veto a bill in 2019 that would have required physicians to care for an infant born alive during a failed abortion.
At the time, a spokesperson for Cooper condemned the legislation as a measure that would “criminalize doctors for a practice that simply does not exist.”
Excluding Virginia, North Carolina is the only former Confederate state without a ban on abortion for at least six weeks of gestation.
Cooper had choice words when the Florida Supreme Court in April upheld the Sunshine State’s six-week abortion ban, making North Carolina a southern haven for abortion access.
“North Carolina and Florida were two of the last places in our region where women could get the care that they needed but now with Florida’s six week ban going into effect, women across the entire Southeast region will have very few places to go and get the reproductive care that they need,” Cooper said in April.
Although abortions in the state decreased by 31% following the implementation of the 12-week ban, healthcare providers in the Tar Heel State estimate that there will be an increase in the number of abortions from out-of-state residents, travelers from nearby states where the procedure faces more severe restrictions.
Gabrielle M. Etzel is the healthcare policy reporter for the Washington Examiner.