Kamala Harris’ record on Catholic issues: What you need to know

 

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris attends an NCAA championship teams celebration on the South Lawn of the White House on July 22, 2024 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Joe Biden abandoned his campaign for a second term after weeks of pressure from fellow Democrats to withdraw and just months ahead of the November election, throwing his support behind Harris. / Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 24, 2024 / 18:00 pm (CNA).

With President Joe Biden bowing out of the 2024 presidential race following intense pressure from within his own party, Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely Democratic nominee to face former president Donald Trump in November’s general election.

Harris was raised by a Christian father and a Hindu mother and attended both Hindu and Christian services as a child. As an adult, Harris was a member of a Black Baptist church. Her husband, Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish and attended a Reform Synagogue growing up.

Throughout her career — as vice president, senator, and attorney general of California — Harris has taken a variety of stances that could pose problems for Catholic voters, a key voting bloc.

Harris has consistently promoted abortion, scrutinized Catholic judicial nominees, and opposed pro-life pregnancy centers and activists. She has also embraced gender ideology as well as transgender and contraception mandates that have, at times, jeopardized religious freedom.

Leading Biden administration’s pro-abortion efforts

As vice president, Harris has taken the lead on many of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to promote abortion, including the effort to codify Roe v. Wade’s abortion standards into federal law.

In September of last year, the vice president embarked on a tour stopping at various college campuses called the “Fight for Our Freedoms College Tour” to promote abortion and other aspects of the administration’s agenda.

At the beginning of 2024, she launched another speaking tour to promote abortion called “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms.” During this tour, Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion clinic in March when she toured a Planned Parenthood facility in Minneapolis. At the event, she praised abortionists and chastised pro-life lawmakers who voted to put limits on abortion.

In an interview with ABC in 2023, Harris criticized states that adopted pro-life laws and urged Congress to pass legislation that would establish federal abortion standards that prevent states from enforcing pro-life laws. In 2022, the vice president claimed that religious Americans can support abortion without abandoning their faith.

As a senator, Harris co-sponsored legislation that would have prevented states from passing abortion restrictions, and she voted against a bill that would have required doctors to provide medical care to a child who is born after a failed abortion attempt.

Scrutinizing judicial nominees’ Knights of Columbus memberships

As a senator, Harris pressed three judicial nominees about their affiliations with the Knights of Columbus: Brian Buescher, Paul Matey, and Peter Phipps. Her questions suggested that the nominees’ ties to the Catholic fraternal organization could make them biased because the group adheres to Church teachings about life and marriage.

In written questions to Buescher, for example, Harris asked the nominee whether he knew “that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when [he] joined the organization.” She questioned whether he agreed with then-Supreme Knight Carl Anderson that abortion is “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” She asked him whether he knew “that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when [he] joined the organization.”

Buescher, responding to Harris, informed her that “the Knights of Columbus is a Roman Catholic service organization with approximately 2 million members worldwide.”

“The organization has a religious and charitable purpose,” he continued. “I joined the Knights of Columbus when I was 18 years old and have been a member ever since. My membership has involved participation in charitable and community events in local Catholic parishes.”

Raiding pro-life activist’s home

In 2016, as California attorney general, Harris’ office launched a raid on the pro-life activist David Daleiden’s home.

The raid was in response to Daleiden’s undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood, which showed organization officials discussing costs for fetal tissue and body parts. It is illegal to sell fetal tissue and body parts.

Harris claimed that Daleiden broke several laws when obtaining videos of Planned Parenthood officials. He was charged with 15 felonies related to allegations of falsification of identity and invasion of privacy. He pleaded guilty, but the case is still ongoing.

As attorney general, she never launched an investigation into the allegations against Planned Parenthood. She received thousands of dollars in campaign funds from Planned Parenthood.

Regulating the speech of pro-life pregnancy centers

As California’s attorney general, Harris co-sponsored and promoted the Reproductive FACT Act, which required pro-life pregnancy centers to post notices that provided information on where to obtain abortions.

Pro-life pregnancy centers sued the attorney general’s office, arguing that the law violated their First Amendment rights. In 2018, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the law violated the right to free speech because it compelled speech.

The legislation served as a model for lawmakers in other states, such as Vermont and Illinois, who tried to regulate the speech of pro-life pregnancy centers.

Opposing religious liberty, embracing gender ideology

Throughout her career, Harris has been against strong protections for religious freedom and has supported gender ideology.

In 2014, Harris was one of 14 state attorneys general to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court that asked the court to force Hobby Lobby to cover contraception — which included potentially abortifacient drugs — in its health insurance policies despite the ownership’s religious opposition.

As a senator, Harris went further, co-sponsoring the Do No Harm Act and the Equality Act. The former would have ended religious exemptions for certain government mandates, such as laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and rules that force insurance coverage of abortion and sex change surgeries. The latter would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

As vice president, Harris has further promoted gender ideology. She has criticized Republican states for prohibiting doctors from performing sex-change surgeries on minors, restricting female sports to only biological women and girls, and preventing teachers from pushing gender ideology onto students.


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5 Comments

  1. At her first campaign events, the gushing Harris came across like a teeny bopper who had just been selected as homecoming queen for a day.

    Why are we reminded of what world-class leader Lee Kuan Yew (long-time prime minister of Singapore) said of amateur Jimmy Carter when he was elected president? In his autobiography Yew openly confides that leaders on the world stage would just have to put up with him for four years. Today, are Harris’s credentials only her misanthropic domestic pogrom of fetal infanticide and against Catholics?

    How will the now trapped rainbow coalition pump air into this empty suit?

    • I believe my obgyn of eastern descent purposefully created my miscarriage. He ordered me for monthly exams which were performed vigorously. At 14 weeks, I called to report bleeding and the nurse told me “that was normal.” She the bleeding became worse, they offered me an appointment the following Monday for an altar sound that was visual only. No heartbeat was offered and it was a technician not an obgyn. They claimed the baby was dead and offered me a D&C two days later. Thereafter I developed endometriosis- very painful- requiring contraceptives to reduce the pain.
      Definitely a deliberate plan to gain fetal tissue for vaccinations. Sick

  2. Catholics, look to your souls as you step into the voting booth this November.

    Will you vote to carry on the war on children that’s been waged for the last half century by the Democratic Party, resulting in the deaths of scores of millions of innocent babies in this country alone?

    Or will you acknowledge the infinite and irreplaceable worth of each individual child created in God’s image?

    Whichever way you decide to go, be prepared to make your answer to your Creator when you are judged.

  3. Harris identifies her radical pro death pro sexual perversion as the rule for political Justice, in consequence any different moral standard is anti justice. Which is why she considers her duty to interrogate Catholics who believe and practice. It can be expected that if she acquires presidential authority she’ll press for prosecution. As she already indicates she will do in interrogating Catholics and opposing prolife centers.
    Her greatest ideological weapon against faithful Catholicism is her doctrine that one can remain Catholic while embracing abortion. Duplicity has become the new global response to ‘backwardists’, those who impede progress. Unfortunately her positions, closeness to Biden has appeal worldwide including Rome. She’s glib, quick, and a formidable adversary for opponents. Republicans seem to have folded on their prolife stance [abortion at present is the major issue during this election since the Left has no other claim to success these past 4 years] as a perceived electability issue. Although it may seem feasible, as it also appeared to this writer, to modify the prolife platform for electability we may be swept into a more polarized, do or die by your beliefs fight for justice.

  4. I will not vote for Harris! She’s for the murdering of innocent unborn children in her stance for being pro-abortion, and she hates Catholics! She is also a communist! We Catholics must stop her any which way we can from winning the election!!

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