Vice President Kamala Harris made a stop at one of the nationwide Women’s March rallies held in major U.S. cities on Saturday, April 15. Speaking in Los Angeles, the vice president said, “[T]his is a moment that history will show required each of us — based on our collective love of our country — to stand up, and fight for, and protect our ideals. That’s what this moment is. When you attack the rights of women in America, you are attacking America.”
According to the AP, Harris “called the latest upheaval over abortion rights a further incursion by conservatives into myriad ‘fundamental rights’ many Americans thought they had.” Harris also attacked “those who would dare to attack fundamental rights and, by extension, attack our democracy,” “extremist leaders who would dare to silence the voices of the people,” and “a United States Supreme Court — the highest court in our land — that took a constitutional right that has been recognized from the people of America.”
There are several problems with what the vice president had to say.
Pro-life regulations and legislation can hardly be characterized as an “attack [on] the rights of women in America,” because there is no “constitutional right” to kill preborn children in this country, for women or anyone else. Roe v. Wade, the ruling that promulgated the idea that such a right did exist, has been corrected by the nation’s highest court, which characterized Roe as having no “grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent” and as having been “egregiously wrong from the start.”
Harris bemoaned the fact that abortion restrictions encroach upon the rights Americans thought they had, but believing something doesn’t make it correct or moral. Americans once thought they had the right to own slaves – another faux “right” which was once upheld by an erroneous Supreme Court decision – but simply because Americans believed slavery was acceptable (even necessary to preserve their way of life) did not make that perceived “right” accurate or ethical.
Furthermore, Harris’s statement about “extremist leaders who would dare to silence the voices of the people” is also out-of-step with reality. Countless polls have demonstrated that the majority of Americans support significant restrictions on abortion.
Regarding the recent decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA], which revoked FDA approval of the abortion pill based on the assertion that the FDA did not adhere to proper protocols, recent polling has shown that the majority of Americans distrust the FDA’s process for approving that drug.
In other words, the “voices of the people” do not support Harris’ extreme abortion policies.
