Steph Curry says ‘women’s right to choose’ is top issue for supporting Harris, despite past neutral stance

After NBA superstar Stephen Curry announced his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention last month, he elaborated on why he’s backing her this election cycle in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.

Curry pointed to “a woman’s right to choose” at the top of his list of issues going into the presidential election this fall.

“Endorsing Kamala is important for me and for my family,” he said. “I just know from, especially women’s rights, and thinking about what’s at stake with this election, and understanding, like, we need to be in a position where women have the right to choose what’s right for them, and that’s at the top of my list for me. I have amazing women in my life who’ve been a huge inspiration to me.”

It marks a strong change in stance from where he was just two years ago. In a 2022 Rolling Stone interview, Curry said he didn’t consider himself pro-life or pro-choice, nor did he feel the need to speak out against the Supreme Court’s landmark reversal of Roe v. Wade earlier that year.

The two have been seen speaking and laughing together in footage from when the vice president met with the U.S. men’s basketball team before it competed at the Olympics in Paris and when the Golden State Warriors visited the White House after winning the 2022 NBA Finals.

“Knowing Kamala and having been around her, I understand she’s qualified for this job,” Curry said. “It’s an easy choice for me.”

Curry has a history of supporting Democrats and even following orders from key figures in the party.

He previously endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Curry has also said former President Obama ordered him to walk back statements in the past.

After making comments in which the point guard suggested the 1969 moon landing was a hoax on the Vince Carter-hosted “Winging It” podcast in December 2018, Curry told Rolling Stone in September 2022 that he received a stern email from Obama telling him to publicly walk back the comments.

Two days after making the comments, Curry later told ESPN his comments were a joke. He later accepted an invitation to tour NASA.

Curry has even spoken at the Democratic National Convention before this year. During the 2020 convention, which was all-virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Curry and his wife Ayesha spoke in a pre-recorded message. The couple’s two children, Ryan and Riley, also made an appearance in the video. However, the couple did not acknowledge that Biden even had an opponent when their children asked who else was running in the video.

Ayesha listed the fact that the couple had children as one of the biggest reasons they were endorsing Biden that year. She also highlighted racial inequality and social injustice as the other major issues for the couple. Curry’s children also said they would be “happy” about the fact that Biden had chosen a woman as his VP candidate that year in Harris.

Curry told Rolling Stone in 2022 that the couple wasn’t sure about the issue of abortion when they made their first DNC appearance.

“We weren’t sure, more so from a faith perspective, especially around abortion,” Curry said. “When you endorse a president, you have a lot of noise comin’ at you: ‘Daughter killer! Baby killer!’… That’s the fine line of knowing the beast of politics, where, especially when we’re talking about presidential elections, being active is more important than the understanding that, with every candidate, there’s not a full, down-the-ballot agreement on everything that they do.”

Curry previously spoke about his Christian upbringing in a personal essay to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Curry wrote that his parents, Dell and Sonya Curry, raised him to believe in God and even gave some credit to God for his basketball talents. He revealed that his mother was the head mistress at a Christian Montessori school when he was in first grade.

Sonya Curry once said that she considered an abortion while pregnant with Stephen, and even got as far as going to the Planned Parenthood clinic, in her memoir, “Fierce Love.” Curry was the couple’s first child. She also opened up about it in an appearance on the “Your Mom” podcast in 2022.

“For me to be able to share that story for people to know, one, so many people are struggling with it, and it’s OK. It’s OK that you are struggling with it. Two, the decision that I made to keep him at that point is also counter with the decision that I made to not carry through with the previous pregnancy,” she said.