Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the Sunday episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, the most-listened-to podcast hosted by a woman, where listeners and viewers were misled on topics such as abortion, IVF, and contraception.
The host, Alex Cooper, asked Harris to speak on abortion as it stands “right now” in the U.S.
Laws and men’s bodies
Attempting to make the commonly used “bodily autonomy” argument in favor of killing preborn children, Cooper asked Harris if there are any laws on men’s bodies — to which Harris replied, “No, no, no, no, no. It’s — look, we are a work in progress.”
The hosts of Rising — Robby Soave, Amber Duke, and Nomiki Konst — reacted, with Soave arguing that all laws restrict what people can do with their bodies, mentioning, for example, that a person can’t “sell [their] kidney,” or do illicit drugs. The hosts also noted that men can get drafted into the military — although legislators are currently considering requiring women to register for Selective Service as well.
“The language of restrictions on women’s bodies — I find it in totally bad faith to use that, because that’s what all laws are, are restrictions on what you get to do with your bodies,” said Soave.
Many YouTube commenters to the podcast video seemed to agree.
Single moms and abortion
Harris stated, “So, you know, on public policy, I often tell my team, ‘Look, I don’t want to hear about public policy; [it’s] a fancy kind of speech or paper. Tell me how it’ll affect a real person.’ So, let’s talk about how it affects a real person. The majority of women who receive abortion care are mothers. So if she’s in a state, and — by the way, every state in the South except for Virginia, has an abortion ban, okay?”
It’s interesting that Harris discusses abortion laws in this manner, as the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute actually considers Virginia “restrictive” in its abortion laws despite the fact that abortion isn’t restricted very late in pregnancy. Guttmacher claims that in Virginia, “Abortion is banned starting at the third trimester, [s]tate Medicaid coverage of abortion care is banned except in very limited circumstances, [p]arental consent is required for a minor’s abortion, [p]arental notice is required for a minor’s abortion, and [q]ualified health care professionals, not solely physicians, can provide abortions.”
Many of the surrounding states either protect all or most preborn children, or protect them beginning around six weeks gestation. However, Virginia’s neighbor, North Carolina, allows abortion up to 12 weeks. And abortion affects a real person every single time.
Harris continued, “So imagine she’s in a state with an abortion ban — one out of three women are, by the way, in our country, and she’s a mom so she’s going to have to figure out… God help her if she has affordable care, God help her if she has paid leave and then she’s going to have to go to the airport, stand in a TSA line, sit on a plane next to a perfect stranger to go to a city where she’s never been to receive the care she needs. She’s going to probably have to get right back on that plane, ’cause she’s got those kids. Her best friend’s probably not with her ’cause that’s who’s taking care of the kids, to get back in that TSA line to get back on a plane, to go home.”
According to the Guttmacher Institute, about half (55%) of women who have undergone abortions have “previously had at least one birth.” According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, 65% of women who have had abortions have had at least one previous live birth — but 87.3% of women who undergo abortions are not married. A large portion of the mothers who are having abortions are single mothers and may lack the support and companionship they want and deserve.
Men/fathers aren’t mentioned at all in Harris’ scenario — just a single mom with kids already at home, who is now seeking an abortion, alone, with a “best friend” to watch her children. And this is telling. It is a sad reality in our culture, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Abortion is always presented as “freedom” and “empowerment,” but it’s clear, at least in the presented scenario (regardless of travel), it isn’t empowering. Women are left to “figure it out” for themselves — implying, really, that abortion is the only feasible choice for these women — instead of receiving true support from the fathers of their children.
Studies have shown that 64% of women who have undergone abortions felt at least some form of pressure to abort — whether that was from their boyfriend or family members, or due to educational or financial pressures they felt at the time. Some even abort due to relationship pressures — knowing that the man with whom they willingly had sex cannot be relied upon to be a good husband or father.
Again, this isn’t living a life of freedom or empowerment.
The high percentage of women having abortions after already having a child is not indicative of the need for legalized abortion; it reveals the need to support women and children and the need for a renewal of values such as saving sex until marriage, which will better protect women and children from abandonment and abortion.
Increasing support for committed marriage and parenthood is what is needed, not abortion access. Children pay with their lives for the decisions of others. And it doesn’t have to be this way. Women deserve better. Their children deserve better.
Belittling faith
“Here’s the thing, here’s the thing […] you don’t have to abandon your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government shouldn’t be telling her what to do if she chooses,” said Harris. “She’ll talk to her priest, her pastor, her rabbi, her imam, but not the government telling you what to do. And that’s what’s so outrageous about it is, a bunch of these guys up in these state capitals are writing these decisions because they somehow have decided that they’re in a better position to tell you what’s in your best interest than you are to know what’s in your own best interest. It’s outrageous.”
What’s especially interesting about this is that Harris herself is a lawmaker who has decided she is “in a better position to tell you what’s in your best interest than you are to know what’s in your own best interest” anytime she votes for or supports any type of legislation. It’s literally what lawmakers do.
Laws exist for a reason, and many exist to prevent or deter others from harming other innocent humans. Abortion laws don’t exist to ‘control women’ but to extend protection for human life to those human beings who are living in the womb, from being deliberately killed by induced abortion.
Harris has frequently attempted to sway Christian or religious pro-lifers to support pro-abortion laws. It’s propaganda and an example of the illusory truth effect — the repetition of false information until it becomes perceived as the truth.
Sadly, many people of faith profess to be “personally pro-life,” but 1) believe they can’t “tell someone what to do with their body” and 2) fear that the media propaganda about women dying due to a lack of abortion access might be true. But it’s not wrong or “telling someone what to do with their body” to prevent someone from killing their own child.
Pro-lifers becoming more ‘pro-choice’
Harris also claimed, “People who felt very strong about that, they are — anti-abortion, anti-abortion — are now seeing what’s happening and saying, ‘Hmm. I didn’t intend for all this to happen.”
First of all, as already mentioned, media propaganda about “needing” abortion for “miscarriage care,” for life-threatening emergencies, and more, is just that: propaganda. If you lie to people for long enough, they will begin to believe it. And that’s what the pro-abortion media and politicians are doing: lying to the public.
And now, the public is afraid that if deliberately killing babies isn’t legal everywhere, then women might die. This wasn’t true before Roe, and it isn’t true now.
The media has also been claiming that since the fall of Roe v. Wade over two years ago, pro-lifers have been leaning more pro-abortion. According to a Pew Research Center poll from May 2024, 54% of Americans agree with the statement that “the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman.” However, those who believe abortion “should be legal in all cases” (as the Democratic party wants) accounted for just 25% of those polled.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll from the same month showed that as gestational age increases, opposition to abortion also appears to increase. While Reuters claims 57% of respondents feel abortion should be “legal in all or most cases,” when asked about support or opposition to a national law allowing abortion through “viability” (defined by the poll as 24-28 weeks), just 27% of the original 57% who said abortion should be “legal in most cases” indicated support for a law allowing abortion up until 24 weeks. Seventy-one percent (71%) opposed it.
And 74% said they would support a law allowing abortion only to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest.
Frankly, it makes one wonder what people think “all or most cases” means, and should also make one question the reliability of polls with such vague and undefined wording.
More Americans may say they are “pro-choice,” but that does not mean they support abortion throughout pregnancy. Most appear to support significant limitations.
IVF, contraception, and health care
Harris went on to make the widely debunked claim that access to IVF treatments and contraception is on the line. She also claimed that abortion facilities offer health care to women.
“Here’s the other thing about this point, that it’s about IVF treatments and access,” she said.
Harris is referring to a ruling made by the Alabama Supreme Court, which said in February that human embryos created via IVF can be considered children under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The ruling simply stated that if embryos are destroyed in an IVF clinic by accident or without the permission of the parents, those parents are legally allowed to file a lawsuit under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The decision did not give personhood to embryos, and no fertility clinic in the state was told to cease operations.
Harris also claimed, “It’s about access to contraception, which is very much at risk with these folks.”
But there are no known efforts to ban contraception. However, in 2018, the Trump administration did issue a rule change, allowing employers with “religious or moral objections” to opt out of paying for birth control for employees, including potentially abortifacient types of contraceptives.
Harris went on: “It is about, back to the point about reproductive health clinics, you know what those clinics also do? They do paps, they do breast cancer screenings, they do HIV testing, and they’re having to close in many places with these bans. So think about the fact that for anyone who has gone to one of these clinics, you understand that it is sometimes the most trusted place where where people receive that kind of health care ’cause they walk into those places that are generally staffed by people who create a safe place for people to come in without judgment so anyone seeking any kind of reproductive health care and wanting to go to a place where they feel safe and without judgment, these clinics have often been the place that people can go and many of them are having to close because of these laws.”
Most abortion facilities focus on abortion. Southwestern Women’s Options in New Mexico, for example, lists its services as abortion, telemedicine for the abortion pill, abortion on babies with disabilities, miscarriage management, pregnancy testing, ultrasound to date the pregnancy, and birth control. There are no pap smears. There are no mammograms. This is not a “trusted” health care provider; it’s an abortion business.
Likewise, the DuPont Clinic based in D.C. lists its services as abortion up to 31 weeks and six days, birth control, “gender-affirming abortion care,” fetal reduction abortion, and treatment for uterine fibroids.
Though Planned Parenthood touts itself as a health care provider, an analysis of its reports shows that while it has increased its abortion market share to 40% of the country’s abortions, its other services — like Pap tests, breast exams, preventative care visits, and even contraception services — have drastically decreased over the years. Plus, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) that offer women’s health services (minus abortion) combined with pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) largely outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities.
After the podcast aired, it was criticized for not discussing the devastation of Hurricane Helene or other issues like the migrant crisis.
