Speaking to NBC’s Hallie Jackson, Kamala Harris this week talked about the one issue about which she speaks with neither teleprompter nor word salad: abortion on demand.  Asked whether she would be willing to accept any “concessions” on this issue, Harris was categorical (perhaps the only time in her campaign): “that cannot be negotiable.”

Let’s unpack that rhetoric.

Harris repeatedly says she’ll “restore” and “codify” Roe v. Wade.  Roe survived nearly half a century because pro-abortionists constantly pretended the decision did not legalize abortion on demand up until birth — i.e., for nine months of pregnancy. 

But that is what Roe did.  The Court talks about “trimesters” and state “interest” in “potential life,” but, in the companion case decided the same day as Roe — Doe v. Bolton — the Court adopted a definition of “health” that essentially meant whatever a woman wanted and her doctor would sign off on.  Given the profitability of abortion to Planned Parenthood, the doctors would sign off on anything.

So let’s go into this election with eyes wide open.  A vote for Kamala’s “codification” is a vote for abortion on demand through the moment of birth for any or no reason whatsoever.  When pro-abortionists talk about abortion using the euphemism “reproductive health care,” it’s not just pretty language: they want to sanitize abortion to remove any consideration of any other reason other than the pregnant mother’s choice to have an abortion. 

Americans have historically been uneasy about that, especially as pregnancy advances.  They have not regarded abortion as something as ethically indifferent as, say, pulling a tooth.  But that is exactly what Kamala Harris and the pro-abortion crowd want to ensconce in law.

Let’s also look at how Harris backpedaled from “religious exemptions,” refusing to say whether she would support, oppose, or concede them.  What are we talking about under the term “religious exemptions”?  Michael New lists some.  Let me add others.

• “Religious exemptions” include the right of employers not to pay for or provide financial support to abortion.  This is not a theoretical issue: the Obama administration spent years suing the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of Catholic nuns, to force them to pay for contraception.  Should every employer — including those who consider abortion killing — be forced actively to pay for it?
• The Hyde Amendment.  For decades after Roe, the Hyde Amendment established a compromise: abortion was legal, but taxpayers were not on the hook to fund it.  Even Joe Biden supported the Hyde Amendment for most of his political life.  If abortion is a “private choice,” after all, why should the state (or an employer) be told to get out of the bedroom...but leave its bank account number behind?  As Democrats became more beholden to the abortion lobby, they also jettisoned support for the Hyde Amendment, demanding that the American taxpayer become complicit in paying for abortion.
• The Church Amendment.  Enacted shortly after Roe was decided, the Church Amendment protected hospitals and individual health care providers from being forced to perform abortions.  Would Harris’s “codification” of Roe nullify those conscience protections?  We know that hospitals have forced nurses to participate in abortions, a conscience rights case the Trump administration pursued but the Biden-Harris-Becerra HHS “resolved” by abolishing the oversight office.  We know from Canada’s experience with euthanasia that doctors are being forced, if they object to killing patients themselves, to refer patients to other doctors willing to kill them.  We know that there are regularly efforts to force medical residents to participate in abortions as if it were just any other “procedure” and to make accreditation of medical education programs dependent on such compulsion.
• The Weldon and Coats-Snowe Amendments.  A companion to the Church Amendment, the Weldon Amendment disincentivizes institutions and programs from trampling individual health care providers’ conscience rights by cutting off federal funding to institutions that try to do that.  Would Harris’s “codification” eliminate that protection?  The Coates-Snowe Amendment protects hospitals from being forced, against their institutional consciences, to perform abortions.  (Snowe here was a woman — former Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine.)

Harris doesn’t want to get into these discussions not because they are complex (they are), but because admitting to the discussion undermines the illusion that abortion presents no greater moral issues than lancing an abscess.  If pro-abortionists allow that to happen, the whole ball of yarn begins to unravel...and they can’t let that happen without then having to admit they support abortion on demand for any or no reason up to birth.

Evading discussion of conscience rights is essential for similar reasons.  To assert a debate in conscience is to admit there are divergent ethical views about abortion, and that position is anathema to pro-abortion orthodoxy.  One has to suppress conscience rights in order to sustain the illusion that abortion presents no moral issues at all.

There’s precedent for that: the fight over slavery.  Yes, slavery was a stain on America from its beginning.  But why did slavery fracture America in 1860 rather than, say, 1820, when Missouri and Maine were trying to become states? 

One reason is, arguably, conscience.  Part of the “Compromise of 1850” designed to accommodate Southern slaveholders was the “Fugitive Slave Act,” the first time a federal law said that everybody — even in the North, where slavery did not exist — had to cooperate in hunting down runaway slaves.  The Southern slavocracy was not content with its “peculiar institution.”  They demanded that every American consider slavery a natural, normal thing — a property right.  And that meant everybody — including those whose consciences rebelled — had to be enlisted to maintain slavery.  That led to Dred Scott (the Roe v. Wade of the 19th century), then to national breakup until, finally, slavery was declared unthinkable.

It’s paradoxical that those who make the most noise about the evils of slavery are also those who most vehemently defend abortion.  Today, as in the 19th century, it’s Democrats most committed to separating groups from the protections of being human.

Image: Nogwater via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped).