Pro-life groups are livid at Vice President Kamala Harris after she took an uncompromising position on abortion rights at odds with many faith-based health care providers.
Harris told NBC's Hallie Jackson on Tuesday that she does not support religious exemptions for abortion and would not make any concessions on that issue, if elected, under a potentially divided government.
"I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body," Harris said in the interview.
Christian and pro-life leaders said her position is hostile toward believing doctors and Catholic hospitals, who view abortion as the sinful taking of innocent life. They questioned whether she would respect constitutional protections for religious Americans if she wins the presidency.
"Kamala Harris' comments here show that she believes the First Amendment no longer applies to people of faith, including Catholics," said Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, in an interview with Fox News Digital.
"She is setting the stage to put Catholic doctors in jail, to strip medical licenses from Catholic physicians and to shut down Catholic health care as we know it."
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, said Harris "should clarify, and quickly, whether given the chance she would force Americans who object on religious or conscience grounds, to participate in abortion."
"Sadly, it would not be the first time Harris has used her political power to trample the rights of religious Americans," she added.
The Biden-Harris administration has come under fire from Christians and pro-life groups for filing lawsuits against activists who prayed outside of abortion clinics under the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances Act. Activist Lauren Handy, with Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, was handed a nearly five-year prison sentence in May for organizing one such protest outside a clinic in Washington, D.C., in 2020.
CatholicVote and others have accused the Biden-Harris administration of "weaponizing" the Justice Department against abortion opponents. The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
In interviews, Harris has refused to say whether there is any restriction on abortion that she supports. When Jackson repeatedly pressed her on whether there were any compromises she might support to pass legislation to expand abortion access, Harris refused to "engage in hypotheticals."
"Let's start with the 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," Harris said.
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The vice president has supported legislation in Congress that would codify the Supreme Court's now defunct opinion in Roe v. Wade, which would guarantee federal protections for abortion access and override nearly all abortion restrictions enacted by pro-life lawmakers at the state level nationwide.
William Wolfe, founder and executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, said Harris' position makes "crystal clear" that "Christians are not welcome in the modern, pro-abortion Democrat Party."
"Frankly, I'm not surprised to learn that a Kamala administration would shred the First Amendment and force Christian doctors and hospitals to provide abortions because ‘expanding abortion access’ is a key tenant of their progressive ‘religion.’ There is nothing that the Democrats value more than the ‘freedom’ to end innocent, pre-born human life in the womb with no legal restrictions or repercussions," said Wolfe.
"Her fanatical commitment to abortion access and disregard for the First Amendment isn't a bug – it's a feature of her platform. I fail to see how any Christian can support such a barbaric and unconstitutional candidate in good faith."
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Public opinion polls show, and political analysts agree, that the 2024 presidential election is on a trajectory to be one of the closest in decades. Seven battleground states will determine the winner, and those states are expected to be decided by slim margins – where support from significant voter blocks, like Catholics, could very well make the difference.
"The Catholic vote will be critical, as it has been in every election over the last 40 years," said Burch.
"The Democratic Party has gone from safe, legal and rare to now let's force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, or we'll throw you in jail. That's quite the shift, and I think voters recognize this as a bridge too far."
Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The Family Leader, an Iowa-based socially conservative group, said he has "never seen an election that represents a bigger contrast of worldview" than the 2024 presidential contest.
"You can't tell a doctor my so-called ‘right’ to abortion trumps your right of conscience, so I can force you to commit what you believe is murder. That's not the America I grew up in, not the America our Founders would have ever permitted, but that's the Kamala Harris America," he said.
"The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the guarantee of religious liberty, is on the ballot. Choose well, America."
Harris will travel to Texas on Friday, a state her campaign has called "ground zero of Trump's abortion bans." She will attend an event in Houston with women "who have faced the direct impacts of these extreme laws" and will speak about the "harm Donald Trump's abortion bans have caused across the nation."
