Kamala Harris repeats claim that abortion compatible with religious faith in debate with Trump
During the first and quite possibly only debate to occur between the Democrat and Republican contenders for the US presidency, Kamala Harris reiterated a contention she has made before that a person can support abortion and still hold true to his or her religious faith. “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply The post Kamala Harris repeats claim that abortion compatible with religious faith in debate with Trump appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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During the first and quite possibly only debate to occur between the Democrat and Republican contenders for the US presidency, Kamala Harris reiterated a contention she has made before that a person can support abortion and still hold true to his or her religious faith.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree with the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris said during the much anticipated televised debate on 10 September.
It’s a contention that Harris has given in various iterations this year, as the Catholic News Agency (CNA) has reported:
“It’s important to note that to support a woman’s ability – not her government, but her – to make that decision [to have an abortion] does not require anyone to abandon their faith or their beliefs,” Harris said in July at the NAACP National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Harris, a Baptist, made a similar claim on 17 June at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, when she said:
“For those of us of faith, I think that we agree, many of us, that there’s nothing about this issue that will require anyone to abandon their faith or change their faith.”
And earlier the same month, CNA notes, Harris met with several faith leaders – none of whom were Catholic – to discuss “reproductive rights”. She repeated the assertion, saying that religious Americans could support Roe v. Wade, which legalised abortion nationwide, in line with their faith:
“To support Roe v. Wade and all it stands for, does not mean giving up your beliefs,” she said on 6 June. “It is simply about agreeing that a woman should be able to make that decision with her faith leader, with her family, with her physician. And that the government should not be making that decision for her.”
During the debate with the former president, both Harris and the moderators, such as ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, called out Trump for his “false” claims and for, as the Guardian put it, “peddling baseless claims that Democrats want to ‘execute the baby’ by allowing abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy”.
Harris attacked Trump’s record on abortion, criticising him for nominating three of the Justices of the US Supreme Court who ruled to help overturn Roe v Wade in 2022. It was at that point of the debate she made her statement regarding faith and abortion being compatible, while adding:
“And I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v Wade, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it in to law.”
As the Catholic Herald has previously reported, it is not at all clear that Trump’s statements regarding abortion and the Democrats, especially in relation to later-term abortions, are false, despite what the Guardian appears so determined to continue to insist upon.
It described the meeting between the two presidential contenders as “a contentious presidential debate that repeatedly went off the rails, as Trump pursued bizarre and often falsehood-ridden tangents about crowd sizes, immigration policy and abortion access”.
RELATED: Guardian reports Trump ‘lied’ about abortion at conference – he didn’t
Donald Trump may get carried away when discussing various things, but it is hard to see his comments about abortion access as amounting to bizarre tangents.
For years the Democrats have consistently rejected opportunities to endorse or pass any limits on abortion – including protections for fully-born babies – and have instead promoted policies that would render the practice effectively unlimited.
This issue has been highlighted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) when it comes to Partial-Birth Abortion (PBA) that occurs in later term pregnancies and in relation to the safe guard laws that are supposedly in place to regulate the practise.
“Such laws exist in most states but they generally have two deficiencies,” the USCCB state. “First, they apply only after ‘viability’ – when the child if delivered could survive indefinitely outside the womb – and PBA is used to kill mostly-delivered children before this stage.
“Second, as required by Roe and Casey, even laws restricting abortion after viability allow abortion when it is deemed necessary to preserve the mother’s ‘health’ and ‘heath’ was defined in Roe’s companion case Doe v. Bolton to include ‘all factors’ – emotional, familial, age, and so on – related to ‘well-being’.
“This ‘heath’ loophole allows abortions to be performed on request during all nine months of pregnancy for virtually any reason.”
The USSB, however, are not usually consulted by the likes of the Guardian and the mainstream media, most of whom of jumping on the bandwagon regarding Trump’s supposedly muddled performance during the debate and his “bizarre and often falsehood-ridden tangents”.
For those US Catholics who may not agree with Harris’s contention regarding abortion and faith, they may also be dismayed that Trump provided further indications during the debate that his position on abortion has shifted from what previously seemed a more pro-life stance, OSV reports.
When Harris asked whether Trump would sign or veto an abortion ban if it arose through the US legislature, he replied:
“I’m not signing a ban, and there’s no reason to sign a ban, because we’ve gotten what everybody wanted — Democrats, Republicans and everybody else — and every legal scholar wanted it to be brought back into the states, and the states are voting,” Trump said.
It followed previous comments he made that “my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights”, thereby striking a similar stance to the Democrats and unnerving many who do not support abortion and want to defend the unborn in the US.
RELATED: Harrison Butker responds to Trump by urging ‘fellow Catholic’ JD Vance to defend the unborn
Photo: People watch the presidential debate between Democratic presidential nominee US Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump during a debate watch party at Shaw’s Tavern in Washington, DC, USA, 10 September 2024 . (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.)
The post Kamala Harris repeats claim that abortion compatible with religious faith in debate with Trump appeared first on Catholic Herald.
