VP Harris promotes abortion access in historic visit to Minnesota Planned Parenthood

Vice President Kamala Harris toured a St. Paul Planned Parenthood clinic Thursday, in what is thought to be the first visit by a sitting president or vice president to an abortion provider. 

Harris’ “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour is meant to highlight the consequences of abortion bans.

The Biden-Harris reelection campaign has sought to capitalize on public revulsion of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which had ensured abortion access for nearly half a century. 

Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor-controlled Legislature passed some of the strongest abortion protection laws in the country last year, while leaders in nearby Republican-dominated states restricted or banned abortions entirely.

Harris said Thursday the closure of reproductive health care clinics was an “intended consequence” of the Supreme Court ruling.

“I’m here at this health care clinic to uplift the work that is happening in Minnesota as an example of what true leadership looks like,” Harris said.

In 2019, Minnesota health care providers performed an average of 827 abortions per month, according to state data. In the second half of 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, that number rose to 1,133 abortions per month — an increase 37% over pre-pandemic levels — as residents of surrounding states traveled to Minnesota for the procedure.

Harris toured the clinic alongside Dr. Sarah Traxler, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood North Central States. The number of out-of-state patients she’s treated has nearly doubled since the end of Roe v. Wade, and they’ve traveled from as far as Texas and Louisiana, Traxler said.

“Our new abortion landscape is difficult. It is dangerous and it is putting my patients and health care providers at severe risk,” Traxler said.

A few dozen protesters — a few times the size of the usual weekend crowd — lined the street outside with posters depicting babies and anti-abortion messaging.

President Joe Biden, a Catholic, once supported the Hyde Amendment that bans federal money for all but life-saving abortion care, but he flipped on that issue in 2019, promising to repeal it. 

(A federal spending bill passed by the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 removed the Hyde Amendment, but the Senate bill included the Hyde language; ultimately, the Senate’s version passed, and the Hyde Amendment remains in place.)

While Biden has infamously avoided using the word “abortion,” Harris did use the word a few times in her comments to the media Thursday. She emphasized that reproductive health clinics like Planned Parenthood offer many other critical services, like pap smears, breast cancer screenings and contraceptives.

“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 their bodies,” Harris said.

Democrats need to flip the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in order to secure abortion rights nationwide, Harris said.

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minnesota; Gov. Tim Walz; and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter were also there.

Visit coincides with strong pro-Palestine movement in Minnesota

Harris’ Minnesota stop came shortly after nearly one in five of the state’s Democratic presidential primary voters selected “uncommitted” on their ballots, widely viewed as a protest vote against  Biden’s support of the Israeli government as it bombards Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

The uncommitted vote sent a warning to the Biden administration, urging the president to shift his approach to Israel or risk losing votes. In recent days, Biden appeared to be putting increased pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but is facing growing calls from fellow Democrats to take stronger action. 

After the Planned Parenthood visit, Harris attended a campaign event in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of St. Paul. 

Reproductive rights activists gathered outside to “call attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, its particular impact on Palestinian women and girls, and Vice President Harris’s complicity in funding Israel’s military operations,” according to a press release from the Minnesota Abortion Action Committee.

“I’m here today as a Jew and a worker in the reproductive justice movement because I’m devastated in the way that the current administration is touting their alleged support for abortion access while funding an urgent reproductive justice crisis in Palestine,” said Leah Soule, a reproductive health worker and a member of Jewish Voices for Peace, in the press release.

Asked by a reporter about the uncommitted vote, Harris talked some more about abortion rights.