Harris, the first female vice president, has become a leading voice on reproductive rights for the Biden administration since the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade. Her visit to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is part of a multistate tour on the heels of President Biden’s State of the Union address last week.

Harris arrived at the St. Paul facility Thursday afternoon, where she was greeted by Sarah Traxler, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood North Central States, and embarked on a tour. She was joined on the tour by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.).

There were about two dozen abortion protesters who stood outside the health center when Harris arrived, and while the vice president was touring the facility, it remained open for patients to be treated, according to the media pool.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision and abortion restrictions in several states that have followed, Minnesota — a state where there is broad access to abortion — has experienced a surge of patients from out of state seeking abortions. Last year, Walz signed a bill that enshrined abortion and other reproductive health-care rights into Minnesota law.

While the Biden administration has largely reached the limits of its authority to protect abortion access, Democrats, including Biden and Harris, are putting access to reproductive care front and center in an election year.

It’s an issue that has been broadly successful for the party in elections since the Supreme Court’s decision. And it’s also something that remains on the minds of voters. Polling this month from KFF found that 1 in 8 voters now say that abortion is the most important issue for their vote in the 2024 elections.

Biden last month criticized former president Donald Trump for wanting to “rip away” rights. In January, he took part in White House and campaign events focused on reproductive health care. The Biden campaign also released a one-minute ad of a woman who was forced to leave Texas to end her planned pregnancy when her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition.

At last week’s State of the Union address, Biden and Democrats sought to make reproductive health-care access a top priority.

First lady Jill Biden and congressional Democrats invited several guests whose lives have been impacted by reproductive care restrictions. In his speech, the president never used the word “abortion,” but he vowed to protect reproductive freedoms and acknowledged the political reality of abortion rights.

“Those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women,” Biden said, in an apparent reference to Trump, his 2024 Republican rival. “But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and we won in 2022, and 2023. And we’ll win again in 2024.”