WASHINGTON — Abortion rights have become a major presidential election issue since the reversal of Roe v. Wade upended the political and legal landscape across the U.S.

Almost half of the states have near-total abortion bans. 

What You Need To Know

  • Vice President Kamala Harris has ramped up the criticism of abortion restrictions passed by Republican-led states and shared the harrowing stories of women affected by those bans

  • Harris indicated she supports the standards set by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which largely protected the right to abortion until viability, which is the point in which a fetus could survive outside the womb and about 23 weeks of pregnancy

  • Harris said the Senate should do away with a filibuster rule that requires a 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation if it means restoring abortion rights across the country
  • Former President Donald Trump appointed the three Supreme Court justices who created the majority to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion

Vice President Kamala Harris has put restoring Roe at the center of her campaign.

Even before President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Harris led the administration’s efforts to restore abortion rights across the country. She is believed to be the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion provider. 

“It is absolutely about health care and reproductive health care. So everyone get ready for the language: ‘uterus,’” Harris said in March at the clinic in Saint Paul, Minnesota. “That part of the body needs a lot of medical care from time to time."

Now that Harris is the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, she has ramped up the criticism of abortion restrictions passed by Republican-led states and shared the harrowing stories of women affected by those bans. 

At a campaign event last month in Atlanta, Georgia, Harris spoke of the pregnant women she met who were turned away from the emergency room.

“Only when she developed sepsis did she receive emergency care, and now we know that at least two women  —  and those are only the stories we know, here in the state of Georgia  —  died, died because of a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said. 

Harris has laid the blame on former President Donald Trump. Trump appointed the three Supreme Court justices who created the majority to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion. Harris hopes to enshrine abortion rights into federal law.

“When Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law,” Harris said during her remarks at the Democratic National Convention in August.  

RELATED: As Democrats push to restore Roe this election, Donald Trump says states should decide abortion laws

Currently, it would take more than a simple majority to pass such legislation. Harris said the Senate should do away with a filibuster rule that requires a 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation if it means restoring abortion rights across the country.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris said in an interview last month with Wisconsin Public Radio.

Harris indicated she supports the standards set by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Those Supreme Court rulings protected the right to abortion until viability, which is the point in which a fetus could survive outside the womb at approximately 23 weeks of pregnancy. Legal experts point out there have long been disagreements about the point in pregnancy in which abortion can be restricted and whether states are allowed to pass some rules that made it harder to access the procedure.

“The problem with that is every pregnancy is different. Every woman’s body is different, and so, you know, whereas my fetus might be viable at 20 weeks, yours might not be viable til 23 weeks, and when you just put a flat week ban in, you know, the doctors don’t like that. They still like having the discretion,” said Carliss Chapman, associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University. “So even going back to Roe, that doesn’t mean we fix everything, because things weren’t fixed when we had Roe.”

Health law experts expect Harris, if elected, to continue the Biden administration’s fight to ensure access to contraceptive services, the medication abortion drug mifepristone, as well as abortion in emergencies under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. 

“Vice President Harris speaks about reproductive freedom, and so she isn’t necessarily singling out the need for access to any one of those services. She’s calling for access to the full slate of care,” said Usha Ranji, associate director for women’s health policy at KFF, a health policy research and news organization. “She also speaks about trusting women and women being able to make those decisions about their health and about their health care needs, and working with health care providers.”

The issue of in vitro fertilization gained national urgency this year after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Harris condemned the Alabama decision and now both presidential candidates expressed supporting access to IVF.