Yesterday, vice president Kamala Harris became the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic. Harris traveled to St. Paul, Minn., to make clear the Biden administration’s desire to protect “abortion care” and to “codify, put into law the protections of Roe v. Wade.” In her remarks, she noted favorably the abortion regime in Minnesota, which does not restrict the practice at any stage of pregnancy.
Harris’s comments were consistent with President Biden’s language on abortion during his nakedly partisan State of the Union last week. Engaging in the Obamaesque practice of condemning members of the Supreme Court while they were seated in front of him, Biden called out “its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade,” and promised to “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again!”
We are now long gone from the days of Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal, and rare.” The Biden–Harris position is affirmatively pro-abortion, and open to federal action to deprive states of the prerogative to regulate abortion that the Dobbs decision rightly restored to them. It is a sign not just of how little this administration would offer those disaffected Republicans it is now allegedly wooing, but also of how radical the Democratic Party has become on this issue. It won’t be the last time we get such a reminder.