Chris Cander

Because Kamala Harris believes that assault against women and their rights must not be tolerated

Vice President Harris has spent her entire professional life devoted to protecting women’s safety, dignity, and liberty. She found her purpose the night her high school friend confessed that she’d been sexually abused by her stepfather, and Harris insisted she stay with Harris’s family rather than return to the soul-crushing crime scene that was her own. 

Kamala Harris knew then how vulnerable women are, not only to sexual and physical assault but to other forms of abuse that half this country endures on a daily basis: voter suppression, workplace and pay inequality, lack of affordable childcare and paid family leave, restrictions on health care, and cancellation of reproductive freedom. As a career prosecutor, Harris understands the justice system. But as a woman, she intimately understands lack of justice. 

It's unacceptable that my young adult daughter has fewer rights today than I did at her age. It’s unacceptable that victims of rape and incest in fourteen US states and counting can be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. It’s unacceptable that roughly 79 percent of sexual assaults each year go unreported to police, because survivors fear not being believed or fear being blamed, and their attackers get away with their crimes and carry on with their lives, unpunished. It’s unacceptable that our 2024 presidential election is between a champion of the prey and an actual predator.

During Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2018, then Senator Harris asked him, “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” Although he refused to answer transparently and now sits on the bench as one of the three conservative justices that Trump appointed while in office, it was an important example of Harris exposing injustice against women. If a seat is vacated during the next administration, I want her to be the one to appoint the next justice on behalf of women.  

At a time when American women’s rights are more vulnerable than ever, we need a leader who recognizes injuries and usurpations—not one who will attempt to inflict more of the same. I will proudly cast my vote for Kamala Harris for president of the United States. A win for her will be a win for us all.

Chris Cander is the national best-selling author of five novels, most recently The Young of Other Animals.