Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday night she would reject religious exemptions for abortion as president, effectively forcing health-care providers to perform the medical procedure in violation of their moral conscience.
The Democratic presidential nominee has been adamant about passing a bill that would codify Roe v. Wade into law, despite the Supreme Court overturning that decision in 2022. In an interview with NBC News anchor Hallie Jackson, Harris indicated she would refuse to compromise with Republican lawmakers on the abortion legislation.
“I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body,” Harris said when asked if she would consider religious exemptions for abortion in the likelihood of a divided government.
Jackson, citing Senators Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) as Republicans who would join Democrats in backing the abortion bill, questioned the vice president on whether she would extend an “olive branch” to Republicans on the issue in the event they control Congress.
“I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals because we could go on a variety of scenarios,” Harris replied. “Let’s just start with a fundamental fact, a basic freedom has been taken from the women of America: the freedom to make decisions about their own body. And that cannot be negotiable, which is that we need to put back in the protections of Roe v. Wade. And that is it.”
The news anchor then pushed Harris on the possibility of Congress failing to pass the legislation, to which the latter answered that she is “doing everything I can to make sure” Democrats win control of both legislative chambers next month.
Harris has made abortion a key issue of her presidential campaign as Election Day nears closer, trying to appeal to female voters in the Democratic Party who wish to terminate their pregnancies at will.
Throughout his decades-long career, President Joe Biden supported the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal dollars from funding abortion under Medicaid. He abandoned that position while running for president in 2019 under pressure from progressive activists.
Pro-life conservatives and Christians condemned the vice president’s “no concessions” remarks, raising concerns over how religious-run medical facilities would be impacted.
“Kamala Harris admits she would deny religious exemptions for abortions—forcing Christians to kill unborn children and seemingly doubling down on weaponizing the government to jail pro-lifers who pray outside abortion facilities,” CatholicVote said. “Why would any Christian vote for her?”
The Catholic advocacy organization previously warned about the threat that a potential Harris presidency poses to Catholics and Christians after Biden dropped out of the race in July. The group said Harris harbored “anti-Catholic bigotry,” citing her question to a judicial nominee in 2019 whether his Catholic beliefs disqualified him from sitting on the federal bench. She was a California senator at the time.
Harris “promises ‘freedom’ but then pledges to federally steamroll Americans into taking part in abortions against their will,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said of the candidate’s position. “Docs must perform them, taxpayers must pay for them, for any reason, in all 50 states, no exceptions.”
“So she’s not only pro-abortion, she is anti-religious freedom,” Faith and Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed agreed. “Duly noted.”
Harris has repeatedly blamed her opponent, former president Donald Trump, for appointing three conservative justices to the Supreme Court that ultimately reversed Roe. As a result, states have adopted laws to ban abortion in most or all circumstances. Harris has called those laws “Trump abortion bans.”
Meanwhile, Trump has said he would leave the issue up to the states instead of mandating a national abortion ban. He also says he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress were to place one on his desk.