Harris rejects religious exemptions when it comes to abortion, a ‘fundamental freedom’

CV NEWS FEED // Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris roiled Christian leaders Tuesday when she took a no-exceptions pro-abortion stance during an interview with NBC in which she announced her opposition to religious exemptions and called abortion a “fundamental freedom.”

NBC’s Hallie Jackson asked Harris to name “specific concessions” she would be willing to make in order to convince congressional Republicans to support a pro-abortion bill the now-vice president has repeatedly promised to pursue if elected to the White House in two weeks.

In her initial response, Harris did not provide an answer to Jackson’s question, instead opting to attack red states’ pro-life laws, which she called “Trump abortion bans.”

The reporter again pressed Harris as to “what concessions would be on the table.”

“Religious exemptions, for example, is that something that you would consider with a Republican-controlled Congress?” Jackson asked.

Harris replied: “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.”

Jackson followed up by asking Harris if she would offer moderate Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins, R-ME, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, “an olive branch, or is that off the table? Is that not an option for you?”

“I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals because we could go on a variety of scenarios,” Harris said:

Let’s just start with a fundamental fact, a basic freedom has been taken from the women of America: the freedom to make decisions about their own body, and that cannot be negotiable, which is that we need to put back in the protections of Roe v. Wade. And that is it.

The NBC reporter asked her, “But what if you can’t do that? What if you can’t get that passed … What do you do with that?” 

Harris told Jackson: “I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole with you right now.”

In asking the question, Jackson referred to pro-abortion policies as “saving lives,” likely echoing a debunked Democratic talking point that baselessly claims pro-life laws are “killing women.”

CatholicVote took to X (formerly Twitter) to respond to Harris’ anti-religious exemption stance as expressed in the interview.

“Kamala Harris admits she would deny religious exemptions for abortions—forcing Christians to kill unborn children and seemingly doubling down on weaponizing the government to jail pro-lifers who pray outside abortion facilities,” CatholicVote wrote. “Why would any Christian vote for her?”