As Rich noted earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech on abortion on Sunday in which she mentioned only two of the three unalienable rights named in the Declaration of Independence.
Harris’s glaring and telling omission (emphasis added):
So we are here together because we collectively believe and know America is a promise. America is a promise. It is a promise of freedom and liberty — not for some, but for all.
A promise we made in the Declaration of Independence that we are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Be clear. These rights were not bestowed upon us. They belong to us as Americans.
And it is that freedom and liberty that enabled generations of Americans to chart their own course and decide their own future with, yes, ambition and aspiration. Therein lies the strength of our nation.
And since our founding, we have then been on a march forward to fully realize our promise to complete the unfinished work to secure freedom and liberty for all.
There was a reason the right to life, which Harris does not mention, was named first among unalienable rights in the Declaration. As Ronald Reagan wrote at the conclusion of his 1983 tract Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation: “There is no cause more important for preserving . . . freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.”