For Kamala Harris, Abortion Isn't About Freedom; It's About Force

At a recent rally in Wisconsin, Harris was once again promoting the need for a federal law "codifying" Roe v. Wade, when two college students shouted out, "Jesus is Lord!" In response, Harris joked, "Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. ... I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street."

The "official" line is that this was a jab at former President Donald Trump's upcoming event in Detroit. But the impromptu message was not lost on Americans: People who think Jesus is Lord apparently don't belong at Harris' campaign events, and rallies where attendees do think that Jesus is Lord will be smaller than those where Harris is the keynote.

Mm-kay.

There are other buried messages in Harris' constant drumbeat of abortion, abortion, abortion. She casts it as a matter of personal freedom, arguing that women should have the right to "control their own bodies." But if Harris finds her way into the White House — and certainly if a President Harris has a Democrat-controlled Congress willing to do her bidding — abortion will not be a matter of freedom but a matter of force.

Harris was uncharacteristically overt about this during a recent interview with NBC News' Hallie Jackson. When Jackson asked whether Harris would support "religious exemptions" for opponents of abortion, Harris was adamant: "I don't think we should be making concessions when we're talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body."

Pressed by Jackson about the limitations that might come with a Republican-controlled Congress, Harris would brook no compromise. "(A) basic freedom has been taken from the women of America: the freedom to make decisions about their own body," Harris insisted. "And that cannot be negotiable."

One need only look at Harris' record as California attorney general to see what she means when she says abortion is nonnegotiable.

When California's Reproductive FACT Act became law in 2015, Harris as AG issued a statement praising the law and taking credit for its co-sponsorship. The law targeted pro-life pregnancy resource centers, mandating that they promote abortion clinics (on penalty of heavy fines if they refused). It was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in NIFLA v. Becerra in 2018.

Harris also targeted pro-life activist and investigative journalist David Daleiden, who obtained shocking undercover footage of Planned Parenthood abortionists bragging — in public — about selling the organs and body parts of aborted fetuses, some past viability. Harris had Daleiden's home raided, arrested him, charged him with multiple felonies (which even the Los Angeles Times called a "disturbing overreach"), seized the damning footage (which has since been released) and changed the law to make similar recordings illegal.

Harris' disregard for the religious freedoms of medical care professionals will not be limited to abortion. Anything she claims is a "right" will be justification for comparable government coercion, including the chemical castration and physically mutilating surgeries of so-called "gender-affirming care," assisted suicide and euthanasia. Physicians who refuse to perform these procedures will have their licenses revoked. Nurses who refuse to assist will be fired. Hospitals and clinics that object will be shut down.

In this respect, Harris will be following in the footsteps of former President Barack Obama, whose administration forced religious institutions — including orders of Catholic nuns — to offer abortifacient contraception and surgical sterilization as part of the insurance coverage they provided for their employees; a policy that prompted lawsuits by the University of Notre Dame and the Little Sisters of the Poor, among other religiously affiliated organizations.

After years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court also struck down the Obama administration's regulations, ruling that they provided inadequate conscience protection.

(Side note: Obama has been dragged out to stump for Harris, in an obvious attempt to prop up her flagging poll numbers. At a campaign appearance earlier this week, Obama said, "I don't understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter." Seriously? Here's a clue: Calling those who disagree with you "bitter" people who "cling to their guns or their religion" and then using government power to force them to violate their religious beliefs is a good recipe for toxicity and division.)

Former Hawai'ian congressional Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party two years ago, and endorsed Trump earlier this year, announced that she had officially joined the Republican Party at a Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, this week. In Gabbard's announcement, she called the Republican Party "the party of the people, the party of peace ... the party of equality, the party of common sense." Gabbard bemoaned the changes in the Democratic Party, describing it as "completely unrecognizable."

She's not alone. Traditional and social media are filled with the personal accounts of former Democrats — politicians like former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, academics Alan Dershowitz and Bret Weinstein, journalists Matt Taibbi and Ana Kasparian, and countless ordinary people — who are disgusted that the Democratic Party has become the party of corporate power and government abuse: censorship, deliberate disinformation, political persecution, weaponization of law enforcement and constant war.

Harris may have thought it was funny to tell two Christian boys that they were at "the wrong rally." But if you're a Democrat who's also a practicing Catholic or Christian, a member of any faith tradition that holds life to be sacrosanct, or simply an American who believes strongly in the individual freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, you're not only at the wrong rally; you're in the wrong party.

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Laura Hollis is an attorney and academic. She resides in Indiana with her husband and their two children.