(LifeSiteNews) — President Joe Biden has been dragged, kicking and screaming, from the presidential race. In a smooth, orchestrated move, Vice President Kamala Harris set the dominoes in motion, with key Democrats lining up behind her candidacy in rapid succession. Suddenly, the Trump-Vance ticket faces a series of unknowns. Harris has been historically unpopular — but will she bring back voters disillusioned by Biden’s obvious decline? Who will her running mate be?
The race has been reset. And in the wake of Harris’ sudden ascendancy, the press is certain of one thing: even more than before, this will now be The Abortion Election.
As Lila Rose of Live Action has already noted, as attorney general of California, Harris targeted pro-life undercover journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt after their groundbreaking reporting on the abortion industry’s sale of baby body parts rocked the country in 2015. She ordered a raid on Daleiden’s apartment, had his laptop stolen, and did everything she could to ensure that the undercover footage of Planned Parenthood — one of her biggest campaign donors — never saw the light of day.
As vice president, abortion is one of the few issues that Harris has shown any passion for. She famously became the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic, touring a Planned Parenthood site in Minnesota. (I wonder if any babies were killed as Harris walked the halls.) Her primary contribution to the now-aborted Biden re-election campaign has been touring the country on a “reproductive health” tour, plugging abortion and condemning pro-life laws as cruel and inhumane. Harris’ primary platform has been a pile of dead babies — and that will only escalate in the coming days.
The press is positively salivating in anticipation, and to read their reporting you’d think that abortion hasn’t already been front and center for two straight years. CBS, calling Harris “Biden’s voice on abortion,” reported that Harris has been the “White House’s voice of unflinching support for reproductive health rights” and that a Harris ticket will be even more aggressive on the issue — if that is possible. Politico’s headline claimed that “Dem ticket shakeup breathes new life into abortion-rights fight,” noting:
The country’s biggest abortion-rights groups quickly rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday, either explicitly backing her bid for president in the wake of Joe Biden’s announcement or, at the very least, praising her record.
All argued that Harris’ ability to speak bluntly and forcefully on abortion rights — and her record on the issue as California attorney general, senator and vice president — give her an edge, particularly as her GOP opponents seek to dodge the issue. Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All, told POLITICO that Harris’ candidacy is already energizing the group’s members and will “make sure this issue is front and center for the election, as it should be.”
Timmaraju, who had remained a fierce defender of Biden even as calls for him to drop out grew, acknowledged that the vice president may be an improvement in some ways. “It’s no secret that President Biden doesn’t have the same record on this issue that Vice President Harris does, and she is able to really take the fight to a different level,” she said. “There were people in our movement who were always concerned that the president wasn’t as fiery about the issue and wasn’t as vocal. So I am hoping that Vice President Kamala leading the ticket is going put some of those fears to rest.”
Christina Reynolds, the senior vice president of the abortion campaign group Emily’s List, called Harris “a terrific messenger on the issue that we believe is going to win Democrats this election, which is abortion.” Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, called Harris’ ascendancy one of life’s “historic moments of opportunity to chart new paths.”
The 19th reported that “a Kamala Harris candidacy could supercharge Democrats’ message on abortion.” Mother Jones, in an article titled “Abortion Rights Advocates See Harris as an Ideal Messenger,” began their report thusly: “On Sunday, abortion rights advocates got some rare good news. After President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection this November, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.” The presidential election, according to Mother Jones, “will be fought and won on (abortion).” Forbes wrote: “Kamala Harris Could Make Abortion A Bigger Issue In Election Over Biden.”
And on and on it went. The abortion industry sees Kamala Harris as their woman — and unless something changes dramatically in the coming weeks, the Democrats see her as their only way forward. Meanwhile, the Trumpified GOP is running from the issue, stripping a commitment to the right to life out of the GOP platform for the first time since 1984, sidelining and silencing pro-life delegates, and remaining completely silent about abortion at last week’s GOP convention in Milwaukee.
The pro-life movement is facing a dangerous situation: A radical pro-abortion presidential candidate determined to run on an abortion platform against an opponent just as determined to offload the pro-life policies he sees as a political liability. It is very possible that Harris, even if she loses, will push the Republican Party even further away from the pro-life movement in the process. We must be prepared for that possibility, and prepared to push back like lives depend on it — because they do.
