ACLU Announces Roadmap to Protecting and Expanding Abortion and Birth Control Access Under a Harris Administration

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released the Harris on Abortion: A Commitment to Abortion Rights and Access for All memo today, outlining Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’s commitments to protect and expand access to reproductive freedom and how the ACLU will ensure Harris delivers on these commitments, if elected. The release of the memo comes as Harris hits the campaign trail as the new presumptive Democratic nominee, and is part of ACLU’s 2024 election policy memo series exploring likely policies from a potential Trump or Harris administration.

Abortion care was already inaccessible for far too many people even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Without the federal right, Harris must carry out her promise to restore reproductive freedom by taking bold action to ensure that everyone can get an abortion if they need one.

A central promise of Harris’s campaign is to enact federal legislation to protect the right to abortion. The Harris on Abortion memo describes how the ACLU will leverage every tool available to ensure Harris carries out this promise so everyone who needs abortion care can access it, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they have. The memo also outlines the additional actions that can and should be taken to protect and expand reproductive freedom should Harris become president whether or not she has supportive majorities in Congress, and outlines how the ACLU and its nationwide network of attorneys and advocates will work towards these goals in the courts, Congress, and communities across the country.

“If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election this year, it will be because she prioritized reproductive freedom as a central tenet of her campaign, but that promise must be met with bold and urgent action,” said Madison Roberts, senior policy counsel for reproductive freedom, ACLU. “Vice President Harris has the opportunity to ensure that Congress enacts federal protections for abortion that reflect the American public's overwhelming support for reproductive freedom. That means demanding Congress send her a bill to sign that ensures everyone who needs abortion care can access it.”

“As extreme politicians increase their attacks on our ability to get abortion care, Vice President Harris has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to push for the bold policies this moment demands and the American people want and deserve,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “We’ve seen just how far extreme politicians will push to deny us our reproductive freedom, from banning abortion entirely to using widely debunked junk science to take abortion pills off the shelf and even threatening to put doctors in jail for providing emergency care to pregnant people. Make no mistake: The attacks won’t stop there, and we know they’ll push to ban abortion nationwide if given the chance.”

The ACLU’s roadmap released today outlines our plan to push for protecting and expanding reproductive health care access and rights in every state across the country:

• Enact federal legislation to protect abortion. If pro-reproductive freedom majorities are elected to Congress, the ACLU will engage in a multi-stage lobbying and mobilization effort to pass equitable federal protections for abortion access. The legislation must go beyond the status quo that existed before Roe was overturned — and ensure that everyone can access abortion care if they need it, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they have. Once the federal right to abortion has been enacted, the ACLU will use this new statutory protection in litigation to challenge the array of barriers to abortion care that politicians have erected.

• Fulfill commitment to end Hyde and other discriminatory abortion coverage bans. As a candidate for president in 2020, Harris committed to ending the Hyde Amendment, promising to introduce a “clean” presidential budget with no policy riders containing abortion coverage restrictions and to work with Congress to keep coverage bans out of final appropriations bills. If she’s elected, the ACLU will urge Harris to build on that progress and fulfill her campaign commitments by continuing to introduce clean budgets without the Hyde Amendment, removing the Weldon Amendment from her presidential budget, and carrying out her commitment to work with Congress to keep such restrictions out of final appropriations bills.

• Eliminate medically unjustified restrictions on medication abortion. Since approving mifepristone in 2000, the FDA has subjected this essential medication to a set of burdensome restrictions that do not apply to virtually any other prescription drug. The ACLU has challenged the FDA’s mifepristone restrictions in court under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Representing leading medical authorities, the ACLU’s efforts led to the FDA loosening burdensome and unnecessary restrictions in line with research on the drug. Unfortunately, the FDA ignored medical consensus in keeping some restrictions in place despite no corresponding safety benefit. The ACLU will continue to use every tool in its toolbox, including our ongoing litigation, to ensure that the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone is: grounded in the strongest scientific evidence; adheres to the strict limitations that Congress has imposed on the agency’s authority; and does not needlessly limit patients’ access to a safe medication used in most U.S. abortions and for early miscarriage care.

• Protect access to abortion and contraception for immigrants. The Harris administration has the opportunity to protect access to reproductive health care for immigrants. This includes making emergency contraception available to immigrants detained at the border; ending the use of internal checkpoints that prevent people from accessing abortion care; issuing guidance to stop U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from patrolling at sensitive locations, including abortion clinics, family care health centers, and hospitals; establishing a firewall to protect information about immigrants seeking reproductive healthcare from being shared with state officials.

• Continue to expand access to birth control. The Biden-Harris administration has made progress toward expanding access to birth control and toward helping the Title X network recover from attacks during the Trump administration, but Congressional funding has not kept up with the demands of the family planning program. If Harris is elected, the ACLU will work with her administration to continue the progress made by the Biden-Harris administration to expand access to birth control and will urge Congress to rectify the funding shortfall and make needed investments in the Title X program. 

• Continue progress toward protecting reproductive health privacy. Even if people can travel out of state to access abortion care, they may still face threats of investigation and prosecution from their home states. Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration finalized federal regulations to strengthen protections for reproductive health data privacy under HIPAA and prevent disclosure of medical records if they sought to penalize people for providing or obtaining lawful reproductive health care. If elected, Harris and her administration must robustly enforce this regulation to ensure it meets its goal of protecting patient privacy and supporting access to health care, including abortion care.

The Harris on Abortion memo marks the first of six memos the ACLU is releasing on the presumptive Democratic nominee. In addition to abortion, the memos will include immigration, LGBTQ rights,, criminal legal system, voting rights, and surveillance. This series follows seven memos the ACLU released focusing on policies of a potential second Trump administration. New memos will be released through August and available here.