On ‘Call Her Daddy,’ Kamala Harris said a majority of abortion seekers are moms. Is that true?
Vice President Kamala Harris this week gave an interview to Alex Cooper, the host of the women’s issues podcast “Call Her Daddy,” where the conversation eventually included the topic of abortion.
Harris has campaigned heavily on a platform of reproductive freedom and restoring the abortion protections of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. That ruling was overturned in in 2022, sending the legality of abortion to the states.
“So let’s talk about how it affects a real person. The majority of women who receive abortion care are mothers,” the Democratic vice president told Cooper in the interview.
That’s true, according to a June 2024 fact sheet from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that advances sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world.
That fact sheet cites data collected between June 2021 and July 2022, the most recently available information, and states that more than half (55%) of people who obtained an abortion had previously had at least one birth. The fact sheet notes that the profile of people obtaining an abortion may have changed after the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe.
The data also show that abortion seekers tend to be young (61% were between the ages of 20 and 29) and poor (41% had an income below the federal poverty level). The report found that approximately one in four women are expected to have an abortion by age 45.
While former President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that women are getting abortions nine months into their pregnancy, or even terminating their infants after they are born, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that in 2021, nearly all abortions (94%) were obtained within 13 weeks of gestation.
In the “Call Her Daddy” interview, Harris also said that she was the first sitting vice president to ever visit a reproductive health clinic.
According to multiple media outlets’ coverage of that March 2024 visit, that also is true. The historic visit was reported on by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the BBC and others.
This story was originally published October 8, 2024 at 11:25 AM with the headline "On ‘Call Her Daddy,’ Kamala Harris said a majority of abortion seekers are moms. Is that true?."