Eight years ago, the Democratic Party adopted a platform so pro-abortion that the former Obama campaign’s faith outreach head admitted it was extreme.
Now, the Harris-Walz ticket adds teeth to that platform. Simply review their respective political records: both Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have dedicated careers to increasing the abortion death toll, stripping pregnant women of the few alternative resources they have and punishing pro-lifers.
As vice president, Harris embarked on an unprecedented nationwide “Reproductive Freedoms Tour,” including stops at college campuses where she promoted abortion to students barely old enough to vote.
She made headlines earlier this year for becoming the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion facility. Planned Parenthood Action in 2020 heralded her inclusion on the Biden presidential ticket by dubbing her “OUR Reproductive Health Champion.”
During her 2016 Senate bid, Harris’ campaign received more money from the Center for Reproductive Rights than any national candidate save presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Her donors included a former Planned Parenthood Federation of America board member, the CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and CEOs and board members of regional Planned Parenthood affiliates.
Not to be outdone, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed the most extreme abortion bill in U.S. history, removing basic protections for children including allowing them to be killed by abortion until the moment of birth, funding abortion with taxpayer dollars, and repealing a law requiring humane care for babies who survive botched abortions. This, after the state reported five babies surviving abortion attempts in 2021, and eight abortion survivors in 2019 – all of whom died after receiving neither medical nor comfort care.
Children were not his only victims. He repealed a law protecting women from forced abortions, tossing aside safeguards against human trafficking and rape like requiring abortionists notify parents if their minor children seek abortions.
Harris and Walz do not stop at promoting the death of children. They also seek to cut resources for their mothers. Investigating and prosecuting pregnancy centers and pro-lifers ensures not only that abortion expands but that pregnant women in need bear the costs.
Governor Walz cruelly cut a state program providing more than $3 million in funding for resources and assistance to vulnerable pregnant women seeking help in the moment they need it most.
During her tenure as California Attorney General 2011 to 2017, Vice President Harris practiced making the “legal process the punishment” against pro-life advocates. . In her time as the top law enforcement official in arguably the most pro-abortion state in the country, she supported Orwellian legislation that would have forced pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise for abortions. The Supreme Court struck down the law in 2018.
Harris abused the legal system by intimidating and investigating California pregnancy centers, a tactic accredited for current, relentless state investigations of pregnancy centers in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere. For non-profit charities serving women, the exorbitant costs of hiring attorneys to defend themselves is burdensome. Punitive – and baseless – investigations divert critical resources from the pregnant women who turn to them in their moment of need.
Individual pro-lifers have also been caught in Harris' crosshairs. In 2015, when pro-life investigator David Daleiden produced undercover videos indicating that Planned Parenthood unlawfully harvested and sold body parts from aborted babies, Harris investigated not Planned Parenthood, but Daleiden’s group.
California Department of Justice agents raided Daleiden’s home and seized computers and hours of his footage; some of the revelatory footage was suppressed for nine years until earlier this month. Harris met with Planned Parenthood officials in her offices prior to the raid, a notable coincidence.
Harris continued her legacy of punitive prosecutions under the Biden administration. In the last four years, their administration prosecuted 50 non-violent pro-life advocates under the FACE Act for praying, worshiping or educating outside of abortion clinics. In the most prominent of these cases, that of pro-life activist Mark Houck, he was vindicated by a federal jury in 2023. At the same time, more than 90 violent attacks against pregnancy centers occurred since 2022— including firebombings and arson. Yet this administration produced only five cases against these criminal activists.
While serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Harris unconstitutionally used religious views as a litmus test for judicial nominees. She interrogated several nominees about their memberships in a Catholic organization, the Knights of Columbus, because the Knights are pro-life.
"Do you believe that a fetus is entitled to any protection under the U.S. Constitution?" she pointedly asked one judicial nominee.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that Christian chain store Hobby Lobby did not have to cover abortifacients in employee health plans, Harris lamented the “perilous loophole” of conscience exemptions.
She dismissed faith-based objections to a woman getting abortion by claiming that “one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body.”
Regardless of your abortion views, any one of these oppressive events is concerning. They don’t bode well for your constitutional freedom to believe and live out those beliefs. But taken en masse, the writing on the wall is clear. The most pro-abortion, anti-woman ticket in history is formidable.
Chelsey Youman is the National Legislative Advisor for Human Coalition Action.
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