Vice President Kamala Harris says in a new interview that people of faith can support the legalization of abortion without it conflicting with their religious beliefs.
Harris made the remarks in a roundtable discussion with MSNBC's Joy Reid and others during Tuesday's episode of The Reid Out. The episode aired days before the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
"One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not be telling her what to do with her body," Harris said.
It is immoral, she said, to outlaw abortion with no exceptions.
"One of the issues on the topic of the Dobbs decision is laws being proposed and passed that make no exception for rape and incest," Harris said. "I'm going to be explicit about what that means. It means that so-called leaders are saying that after an individual has experienced such a crime of violence, a violation to their body and surviving that, that these so-called leaders would say to that same person, 'And the next decision you make about your body is not yours either …' That's immoral. That's immoral to take away her ability to decide what happens to her body next."
The issue of abortion, Harris said, is about freedom. She urged the House and Senate to pass a law that legalizes abortion nationwide.
"Ultimately, the United States Congress can put back in place what the United States Supreme Court took," Harris said. "The United States Supreme Court took a constitutional right. The United States Congress has the power to put in place a protection of that individual privacy right that all Americans should be entitled to."
There have been more than 60 million legal abortions in the nation's history.
The Supreme Court justices, in a 5-4 decision last June, overturned Roe, sending the issue to the states.
"It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives," the majority decision said.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Alex Wong/Staff
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.