In an interview with Spectrum News on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris made the case that abortion will be one of the top issues at stake in November’s presidential election.

Democrats have plotted a full-court press on the issue in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in June of 2022, which overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the right to an abortion. Since the ruling, the abortion rights movement has seen major victories when the issue has been on the ballot, including in traditionally red states like Kansas and Ohio, and Democrats credited their stance on abortion with stronger-than-expected results in the 2022 midterms, which saw Democrats expand their margin in the U.S. Senate and only narrowly lose the House of Representatives.

“When we've seen it on the ballot … since this case came down over a year ago, from Kansas to California, Ohio to Virginia, red states, blue states, the American people voted in favor of freedom,” Harris said in Thursday’s interview. “I think that a lot of people who are now coming to realize the harm that has actually resulted from this ruling, do feel a level of compassion and don't believe it's right that people are suffering the way they are.”

“The highest court in our land took a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America, from the women of America, which is the ability and the freedom that a woman should have have to make decisions about her own body,” the vice president said. 

The interview comes as Harris — who has been the Biden administration’s point person on the issue since the Dobbs decision — has been criss-crossing the country on a tour aimed at promoting abortion rights, a key issue for Democrats ahead of November’s election. Harris’ “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour kicked off in the battleground state of Wisconsin last month and brought her to San Jose, Calif., earlier this week as the administration — and the president and vice president’s reelection campaign — seek to keep the issue of abortion at the forefront of Americans’ minds before they head to the ballot box.

“So many women have been suffering, and many, most, silently suffering,” Harris said Thursday. “I’ve met women who’ve had miscarriages in toilets. There are women who have been denied emergency medical care during a miscarriage because the the people who worked at the hospital were so afraid that they might be sent to jail. And do you know why? Because around our country laws are being proposed and passed that include providing prison time for doctors or nurses that give emergency or even give any kind of reproductive health care.”

“It is a big issue that is happening every day,” Harris said.  

Abortion was also the topic of Biden and Harris’ first joint campaign event of the year, a rally in northern Virginia one day after the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade last month.

“Former President Trump hand-picked three Supreme Court justices because he intended for them to overturn Roe,” Harris said at the event in Manassas, Va, last month. “He intended for them to take your freedoms. He is the architect of this healthcare crisis. And he is not done.”

The choice to focus their first 2024 rally on abortion rights signaled the president’s reelection campaign is counting on the issue remaining salient in 2024 as Biden faces low approval ratings, struggles to convince voters the economy is doing well under his leadership — despite several recent indicators of Americans’ growing satisfaction with financial conditions — and navigates multiple global crises, including escalating conflicts with Iran-backed militant groups in the Middle East and tensions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

While Democrats have employed this full-court press on abortion, any measure to restore the provisions of Roe v. Wade face an uphill battle, thanks in part to the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster threshold. (It’s a similar reason why former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, one of the top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, said last year it was “not honest” for her then-rivals to promise a national abortion ban, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “Nothing's gonna happen if we don't get 60 votes in the Senate.”)

Harris acknowledged that Democrats need to have a stronger majority in both chambers of Congress to codify abortion protections.

“What the Supreme Court took away, Congress can put back in place,” Harris said. “But we do need a majority in Congress who will agree that … the government shouldn't be telling her what to do.”

“We’ve got to trust women to know what's in their own best interest and to consult who they deem right to help them navigate a very difficult decision,” she said. “But the government shouldn't be telling them what to do. It's 2024. We’ve got laws on the books that don't let women make decisions about their own bodies, so we need to have a majority in Congress who just agree with that point.”

Harris’ tour continues next week in Savannah, Georgia, another crucial battleground state that Biden narrowly won over Trump in 2020. 

In her interview, Vice President Kamala Harris did not mince words about efforts to kill a bipartisan Senate deal to implement border policy reform in exchange for unlocking aid to Ukraine, Israel and other international allies.

“We have been working around the clock with a bipartisan group of senators to fix the problem [at the border],” Harris said. “We have requested $14 billion to send to the border to fix what's broken there. But there are some people who are intent on standing in the way of solutions because they want the political chit, they want to play the political card on the problem instead of fixing it.

“We're nine months away from an election, we could start fixing it right now,” she added. “And real leaders should be about solutions, not about fanning a problem for the sake of their own political survival.”

The deal has run into significant resistance from Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and some House Republicans led by Speaker Mike Johnson, thought the Louisiana Republican this week denied that they were were scuttling it to help the former president's reelection campaign.

Harris has been the Biden administration’s point person on immigration since March 2021, primarily focused on ways to address the root causes of migration. Throughout her tenure in the White House, Harris has touted billions of dollars in private sector investments aimed at fixing the issue.

Read more about her comments on the Senate's bipartisan border bill.