Abortion

Intercept -  After months of touring the country to push back against draconian restrictions on abortion care, Vice President Kamala Harris has made reproductive rights central to her nascent presidential campaign. She has pledged to turn back the clock on Dobbs, the Supreme Court ruling that eliminated constitutional protections for abortion. “We need to put into law the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris told Politico. “And that is about going back to where we were before the Dobbs decision.”

That vision is not exactly visionary. A growing number of abortion advocates say that codifying Roe only guarantees government interference in reproductive health care — the very thing Harris has said she opposes. ...Calling to “restore Roe is a call to continue banning abortion and to continue criminalizing pregnant people,” said Dr. Jenni Villavicencio, an OB-GYN and complex family planning specialist who provides all-trimester abortion care. “It is an outdated call that in reality threatens, harms, and punishes abortion seekers and their providers.”...

The right to abortion guaranteed by Roe (carried through and refined under later Supreme Court decisions) was always considered a floor and not a ceiling. In other words, Roe provided a base level of reproductive freedom but did not constrain states from going further to protect reproductive rights.