Abortion at the center

Vice President Kamala Harris told her staff to plan a quick trip to Georgia on Friday, hoping to get some big headlines about abortion rights. She got them, of course, and abortion has become the biggest single issue of her campaign for the White House. When President Joe Biden was still in the race as the presumed Democratic nominee, Harris was announced as the administration’s point person on abortion. She was glad to take the role. Now, she has the lead role all to herself, and abortion has become her campaign’s central issue.

Of course, even as President Biden shifted to his own radical pro-abortion position to get the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, Harris has been there all along. Biden did not like to use the word “abortion,” but Harris was, at least in some contexts, willing to shout the word over and over again. By one count, she said “abortion” 15 times at a single event in Florida.

Attempting to get as many votes as possible, Harris has more recently shifted to talking about abortion as healthcare and restrictions on abortion as a “healthcare crisis.” That was the message she took to Atlanta, just one day after she had sent the same message in an appearance with Oprah Winfrey. Harris called all restrictions on abortion “immoral” and accused pro-life advocates of being “hypocrites” for defending unborn life. “How dare they? How dare they? Come on,” she chided.

Harris brought up the cases of women reported to have died preventable deaths because they were denied medical treatment, which was blamed on restrictive abortion laws. She spoke of one Georgia woman who died of medical complications after seeking to end her twin pregnancy by abortion. Arriving in another state too late for the scheduled abortion, the woman was given pills for a “medication abortion” on her own. She later developed complications from the abortion pill process and died. The vice president, joined by others on the pro-abortion side, believes this is a winning argument. Pro-life advocates responded directly that nothing in the Georgia law prevented doctors from treating the woman and saving her life. But Harris was undeterred. This is her campaign’s center of gravity.

One tragic aspect of this entire picture is what is profoundly missing: any acknowledgment that we are talking about a woman taking medications specifically intended to abort her pregnancy, to terminate the two developing lives within her. That is simply presented as a matter of what pro-abortion advocates see as routine medical practice. The babies simply disappear. There is no acknowledgment that we are talking about killing unborn human lives. Instead, abortion is reduced to nothing more than routine healthcare for women. Wait just a minute—the new language is “pregnant people,” except when campaigning for women’s votes. The unborn life just evaporates as a concern, not even worthy of mention, and all that remains is a woman’s autonomy and “reproductive health.” That term, used in this pro-abortion context, is both immoral and ironic since ending a process of reproduction is the whole point.

At this point in the campaign, with voting already underway in some states, we should note that Kamala Harris is running the most radical pro-abortion campaign in American history. She ran against Joe Biden in the early Democratic primaries for the 2020 nomination by attacking him for supporting the Hyde Amendment that prevents taxpayers from being coerced into paying for abortions. He promptly changed his position. Harris is fully committed to eliminating the Hyde Amendment and to providing abortions with federal tax monies.

As attorney general in California and then in the U.S. Senate, Harris was a consistent and radical defender of abortion and was the avowed enemy of abortion restrictions. She even argued that states should not be able to restrict abortion without federal approval (fat chance of getting that approval).

Now, she says she is continuing Biden’s demand that would “legislate Roe,” meaning put the structure of Roe v. Wade back into place through federal legislation. It’s all a lie. It’s always been a lie. Even if President Biden honestly meant what he said, he was lying to himself. His own party would never settle for legislation that merely codified Roe. They are going for broke, and Harris has been pushing for broke all along.

Need proof? Look at the excitement of the pro-abortion crowd. Look at her promise to end the Hyde Amendment and fund abortion with revenue taken from the federal taxpayer. Look at the proposals to use the entire federal government to advance the abortion cause. Look at her opposition to crisis pregnancy centers and states’ rights. Look at who she chose as her running mate. Finally, look at one central and undeniable fact: Vice President Kamala Harris has not directly identified a single limitation or restriction she would accept—all the way up until birth. Not one. Not a single one.

As a CNN headline reported last week, “Harris is banking on one key issue.” You bet she is, and she is proud of it.