Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated her support for eliminating the filibuster to restore Roe v. Wade to codify abortion rights and protect women’s reproductive freedom.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” Harris said during a taped interview with Wisconsin Public Radio’s Kate Archer Kent.
What this means: Eliminating the filibuster would effectively allow the US Senate to pass some legislation with a simple majority rather than meeting a 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation.
In 2022, the vice president previously said she supported ending the filibuster to protect reproductive and voting rights.
“You know, for me, as Vice President, I’m also president of the Senate. And–and in our first year in office, some of the historians here may know I actually broke John Adams’s record of casting the most tiebreaking votes in a single term. How about that? How about that?,” Harris said.
“So, that being the case, I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights. I cannot wait,” she added.
During a news conference in Madrid in 2022, President Joe Biden also called for changing the filibuster rules to pass abortion rights into law.
Harris’ remarks come a day after former President Donald Trump cast himself as a “protector” of women at a Pennsylvania rally Monday evening and claimed that American women won’t be “thinking about abortion” if he’s elected.
The Harris campaign is hoping the political saliency of reproductive rights can help galvanize voters ahead of Election Day. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found the vice president continues to lead Trump when it comes to whom likely voters trust to do a better job on abortion.
