Almost two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Vice President Kamala Harris — America's first female Vice President — made history on Thursday by being the first sitting president or vice president to visit an abortion clinic. Harris, as first reported by NBC News, planned on visiting the Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota in a way that would not interfere with the providing of medical services. Instead she toured the clinic and conversed with healthcare providers and patients who were interested in speaking with her.
“Walking through this clinic," Harris said in a press statement after the tour, she described "people who have dedicated their lives to the profession of providing healthcare in a safe place that gives people dignity, and I think we should all want that for each other.”
The vice president described a "healthcare crisis" that has resulted since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. “Elections matter,” Harris said. “When it comes to national elections and who sits in the United States Congress, there’s a fundamental point on this issue that I think most people agree with, which is that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling women what to do with her body.”
Harris is taking the lead among President Biden's administration in advocating for women's health, launching a "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour at the start of the year for that purpose. Harris' visit to the Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic was the sixth stop on that tour since January. On this occasion, Harris' tour was greeted with anti-abortion protesters holding signs indicating their opposition to Planned Parenthood. Their signs included slogans like "abortion is not healthcare" and "Planned Parenthood = abortion." Harris is not the first national elected official to address a Planned Parenthood, but the first to do so from an actual clinic. President Barack Obama, while in office in 2013, addressed a Planned Parenthood chapter from a hotel in Washington, D.C.
