Abortion is a crucial, if not the most important issue, an issue for many voters – especially women, according to polls – as the US presidential election approaches in November.
Since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate in August In 2024, she expressed support for abortion rights. Specifically, she supports Congress passing federal law that would protect the right to abortion following the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decisionwhich recognized a constitutional right to abortion.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, meanwhile, bragged about having proposed three Supreme Court justices who were part of the judicial majority that voted in 2022 to abandon a constitutional right to abortion. However, in September 2024, Trump said he would not sign a federal abortion banreturning to his previous statements. He also does not have answer a question during the September presidential debate on whether he would veto legislation banning abortion.
Harris and Trump have very different backgrounds on abortion. As an academic, my scholarship focuses on reproductive health lawhealth law and family law. In this article, and in advance of the election, I briefly examine the broad outlines of each candidate’s past positions and actions on abortion.
Harris’ abortion record
As Attorney General of California, Harris co-sponsored THE FACT Reproduction Actwhich, among other requirements, required emergency pregnancy centers to inform patients that they are not licensed medical facilities and that abortion services are available elsewhere. These centers are nonprofit organizations that advise pregnant women not to have abortions, sometimes using deceptive tactics.
Anti-abortion groups sued to block the law once it took effect. And, in 2018, the United States The Supreme Court struck down the law on First Amendment grounds.
In 2017, Harris investigated the tactics of undercover videographers at Planned Parenthood clinics. who, through deception and fraud, sought to trap clinicians who made controversial, albeit legal, statements and may have violated the state’s secret recording law.
As a U.S. senator, Harris opposed to abortion invoices this would have conferred personality rights on fetuses. None of them finally adopted.
Conversely, Harris defended various invoices this would have protected and advanced reproductive rights. In 2019, for example, Harris was a co-sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Actwhich would have enacted a federal statutory right to abortion. This was not adopted either.

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Finally, during Harris’ tenure as vice president, the Biden administration used its executive authority to ease barriers to abortion access, primarily through actions by federal agencies. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, removed a rule in 2021 that prohibited mailing of medical abortion.
The Ministry of Health and Social Services issued directives asserting that federal law requires emergency departments to perform an abortion when medically necessary to stabilize a patient requiring urgent care.
The Biden-Harris administration has also supported federal legislation providing accommodations for abortion. THE Pregnant Workers Fairness Actenacted in 2023, requires employers to provide leave in the event of a worker’s miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion.
Although the Biden-Harris administration’s abortion policy does not necessarily rest solely with the vice president, Harris, since the overturning of Roe, has been at the helm of the administration.”Fight for reproductive freedoms», speaking nationally in favor of the right to abortion. Harris also highlighted the damage caused in 14 states, in particular, where abortion is prohibited throughout pregnancy or after six weeks of gestation.
Trump’s record on abortion
During his tenure as president, Trump has supported various changes – in the form of judicial appointments, federal funding and agency actions, some led by anti-abortion federal employees – in an effort to make more difficult for people to access abortion care.
Trump began his presidency in 2016 by promising to nominate Supreme Court justices who overturn Roe v. Wade. He named three justices – Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch – who joined the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationreversing Roe in June 2022.
The senate confirmed 226 judges whom Trump appointed to lower levels of the federal courts. Trump’s appointments followed a 2016 campaign promise that he would ” appoint pro-life judges.” A few were officially opposed to abortionand some believed that embryos must be processed like children.
From the beginning, the Trump administration prioritized defunding Planned Parenthood clinics, which provide abortion care and receive federal funding under the federal Title X program for other family planning services. Trump signed a bill in 2017 allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood clinics and others organizations that provide abortion, even if abortion care was not supported by Title X funding.
The Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to replace the Affordable Care Act and undermine its coverage for contraceptives as well as its neutral stance on insurance coverage for abortion. Trump supported bills like the one that never passed American health care law limit coverage of abortion in private health insurance plans.
Trump has also appointed several people with anti-abortion positions to his administration, including Charmaine Yoestformer CEO of the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life, which was a senior communications executive at the Department of Health and Social Services.
The Trump administration has pushed many other anti-abortion policies. For example, the Department of Health and Social Services’ 2017 strategic plan defined life as from the conception — a decision that supported funding for crisis pregnancy centers and abstinence-only education programs.

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Finally, the Trump administration has taken an anti-abortion approach to foreign policy. Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Mexico City Policy. Global gag rulewhich prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive U.S. funds from performing abortions or referring patients to abortion services elsewhere. As part of the Mexico City Policy, Trump cut $8.8 billion in U.S. foreign aid in 2017 for overseas programs that offer or refer for abortions.
In 2017, Trump too US funding suspended to the United Nations Population Fund, an agency focused, among other things, on family planning for low-income people around the world, which does not “promote abortion” but “supports the right of all women to receive postabortion care.” Biden restored funding to the UN agency in 2021.
In the coming weeks, both candidates will have a lot to say on abortion, possibly refining or changing their positions on certain aspects of abortion law. In evaluating what both candidates have to say about how their administration will approach abortion, voters might consider what we know about their past actions.