Kamala Harris Compares Roe Reversal to Slavery
On Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris compared the reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision to a darker time in U.S. history when the government tried to claim “ownership over human bodies.”
Seemingly making a reference to slavery, Harris suggested that the country is moving backwards now that the Supreme Court determined that there is no constitutional right to an abortion.
“We have to recognize we’re a nation that was founded on certain principles that are grounded in the concept of freedom and liberty,” she said during an appearance at the Essence Festival in New Orleans. “We also know that we’ve had a history in this country of government trying to claim ownership over human bodies.”
For many years, the pro-life movement invoked the slavery analogy to argue that the pro-abortion activists risked committing the same historical injustice by denying human existence to the unborn.
“We had supposedly evolved from that time and that way of thinking,” Harris said. “So this is very problematic on so many levels.”
Last month, the Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law prohibiting abortion at 15 weeks of gestation in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women Health Organization, reversing precedents Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationally, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe without revisiting the constitutional question.
“The Supreme Court, with the Dobbs decision, for the first time in the history of our nation, took a constitutional right that had been recognized, and took it from the women of America,” Harris added. “Took a constitutional right.”
The Dobbs decision, with the majority opinion penned by Justice Alito, established that abortion is not rooted in the nation’s history and tradition and is not an essential component of “ordered liberty.”
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” the ruling read.
