Washington D.C., Sep 11, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).-
Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who was previously attorney general of California, has a record of legislative and judicial advocacy for laws protecting abortion or targeting pro-life pregnancy centers, many of which are operated by Catholics.
Her political offices have had close, sometimes collaborative, ties with abortion lobbying groups.
The Reproductive FACT Act
California’s Reproductive FACT Act, passed in 2015, required medically licensed pro-life pregnancy centers to post signs advertising the availability of free or low-cost abortion procedures in the state. The law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2018.
Denise Harle, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told CNA that the requirement for pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortions “was fundamentally at odds with their mission.”
Harle said that the law also required pregnancy care centers that offer other forms of pro-life help but not medical services “to put large, conspicuous disclosures in all of their advertising materials that implicated that the pregnancy centers weren’t qualified to do what they wanted to do.”
The law, Harle said, “was very clear that it was targeting pro-life viewpoints.”
“In fact it was written right into the legislation that California was concerned with what it perceived as the problem of their being many, many pro-life pregnancy centers in the state, and the state acknowledges that was at odds with California’s—what they called their proud legacy of reproductive freedom,” Harle said. “It was an undisguised attempt at targeting pro-life viewpoints for punishment.”
Harle, who was involved in the NIFLA vs. Becerra Supreme Court case in which the high court overturned the law for violating the First Amendment, said the Reproductive FACT Act was blatantly unconstitutional.
“There aren’t examples where the government forced Alcoholics Anonymous to hang posters that advertise where to get alcohol, and that’s because it’s not constitutional, that’s because the first amendment doesn’t allow this sort of compelled speech and that’s why we don’t see it in other contexts,” she said.
As attorney general, Harris was a vocal advocate for the law. In a 2015 statement, she called herself a co-sponsor of the legislation, and praised then-Gov. Jerry Brown for signing it into law.
The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates filed a lawsuit challenging the Reproductive Fact Act, which lead to the Supreme Court striking down the law in NIFLA v. Becerra in 2018.
NIFLA’s president Tom Glessner told CNA last week that “the name of the case was initially NIFLA vs. Kamala Harris, because she was the attorney general at that time.”
Harris was elected to the United States Senate in 2016, and was replaced as attorney general by Xavier Becerra, who continued the state’s defense of the law.
Glessner said Harris lobbied for and supported the legislation, working “hand in glove” with NARAL to get it passed.
“Her fingerprints were on it from the very beginning,” he said, adding that Harris’ description of herself as a co-sponsor of the law “shows her enthusiasm for it, tells us of her activism in getting it passed.”
Anne O’Connor, NIFLA’s Vice President of Legal Affairs and co-counsel in arguing the case before the Supreme Court, told CNA that “NARAL lobbies against pregnancy centers in states and counties and municipalities to get laws passed that would silence pregnancy centers.”
“That’s exactly what NARAL did in California and with Harris’ support, they had this law passed against us in 2015 that was just on its face clearly unconstitutional, but it took a few years to go up through the Supreme Court, where Harris and her office aggressively defended the law till we finally had the Supreme Court give us justice,” O’Connor said.
“It’s frustrating when someone has an abortion rights agenda that just blinds them to our other rights like free expression.”
O’Connor said Harris’ defense of the law cost the state of California over a million dollars in legal fees upon losing the case.
“She’ll do anything for abortion and against pregnancy centers no matter what the cost,” O’Connor told CNA.
Glessner called the Reproductive FACT Act “a clear violation of the first amendment right to free speech,” and argued “the first amendment gives you the right to speak, but it also protects you from the government compelling you to speak.”
He likened the Reproductive FACT Act to forcing the American Cancer Society to promote cigarettes.
“It’s an outrageous mandate for people to violate their consciences,” Glessner said.
O’Connor said Harris’ record as attorney general and “her positions throughout her career have been very clear that she is for abortion no matter what and she’s opposed to people who are against abortion.”
She added that she is concerned about efforts at a federal level to pass comparable legislation targeting pregnancy centers.
“I would fear that there would be federal legislation like what we fight in the states that targets pregnancy centers, which really shocks us because pregnancy centers do such great work,” O’Connor said. “They’re there on the front lines serving women day in and day out, providing them the support they need to make an educated choice.”
Glessner echoed O’Connor’s concerns, pointing to the impact of the election on the federal judiciary.
“Instead of us winning NIFLA vs. Beccera 5-4, we would be losing those cases,” he said.
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Harris’ advocacy for the Reproductive FACT Act.
Amicus Briefs and Legislative Agenda
Life Legal Defense Foundation, a law firm representing the Center for Medical Progress, published an email exchange between Harris’ Special Counsel for Legislation Robert Sumner and Planned Parenthood’s California lobbying arm, in which Sumner offered to be “helpful where I can” on the organization’s legislative priorities.
As attorney general of California, Harris frequently joined friend-of-the-court briefs at a federal level in support of pro-abortion laws.
One such brief was in the case that became Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case regarding a Texas law requiring abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers and for doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within thirty miles of facility.
Harris argued the law “undermines both public health and a woman’s right to choose.” The law was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016.
Relationship with Pro-Abortion Lobbying Groups
According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Harris’ 2016 Senate campaign—which took place while she served as attorney general of California—received $38,830 in campaign contributions from pro-abortion lobbying groups. Her 2014 re-election bid for attorney general was supported by five California Planned Parenthood PACs.
Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which has endorsed Biden for president, praised his selection of Harris. In an Aug. 11 statement, Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said throughout Harris’ career, “she has been a steadfast champion for reproductive rights and health care.”
“With this selection, Joe Biden has made it clear that he is deeply committed to not only protecting reproductive rights, but also advancing and expanding them,” McGill Johnson said.
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Though Islam refers to itself as “The Religion of Peace”. serenity and tranquility seem to allude it too often. The news of the day gives a different impression as to the claims!
Muslims that have converted to Christianity are outstanding representatives of the Christian faith. Praise God for their testimony.
Psalm 119:165 Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.
Psalm 34:14 Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
Psalm 29:11 May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!
Psalm 4:8 In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
James 3:18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Blessings for Rushdie and for all Muslims that they too come to the un-surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.
About the novel, “Satanic Verses,” this further explanation of its origin: “The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses that refer to three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the ‘satanic verses’ was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari” (Wikipedia).
Even the very first biographers wrote long after Muhammad, the first about one hundred twenty years after his death: Ibn Ishaq (704-773 A.D.). The only version of this lost work was edited by Ibn Hisham (d. 835 or 840), a full two centuries after Muhammad, and translated into English by A. Guillaume only in 1955 (“The Life of Muhammad”. Oxford University Press, 800 pages of small print).
The “satanic verses” in the Qur’an refer to a visit Muhammad (as the revolutionary monotheist) is said still to have made one night to a pagan temple. The triad goddesses are the offspring of Allah and his wife. Charged with hypocrisy, Muhammad immediately regretted the one-night relapse and unambiguously clarified the distance between Allah alone and the paganism of Mecca.
Related to which, Muhammad’s understanding of the Triune Oneness is distorted by the cultural imprint that the Christian Faith is only a (pagan-like) triad. And, further, the error identifies the triad as God, Jesus (under Islam, a prophet rather than “the word made flesh”), and Mary (there is no Holy Spirit).
Muslims do not read the Bible, because they know (!) that under the Qur’an, as the final revelation (“the word made book”), all chronologically earlier scriptures—both Jewish and Christian—are corruptions of Islam as the definitively-restored natural religion.
I’m starting to think of Francis not as a new Luther but as a new Mohammed, seeking, in due course to erase all that preceded him. Of course he needs references to Christ from time to time, but essentially as a prop to confer an imaginary semblance of legitimacy for his agenda.
God bless you dear physicist and seeker of God’s truth.
Or, maybe not a new Muhammad, but a sprout from the same trunk of natural religion?
In olden times the Syrian scribes—forced converts to Islam—are thought to have inserted Christian references into the Qur’an, in order to make scavenger-hunt Islam more palatable. (Hold that thought…).
The Qur’an borrow from the Pentateuch, in part to endorse the “law of Moses,” but so far as I can find, explicit reference is made only to the first four (affirmative) commandments, and not to the (prohibitive) final six (thou shalt not…). The parallel, some would say, is with current distortions of moral theology, which celebrate works of charity and mercy while discounting the absolute moral prohibitions as steadfastly affirmed (rigid?) in the Catechism and Veritatis Splendor.
So, will the new super-dicastery of Evangelization peddle a generic Christianity unaccountable to the demoted “dicastery” for Doctrine of the Faith, or not?
And, does “fraternity”—-with all of its favorable meanings–also represent an accommodation like that of the Syrian scribes of the 7th and 6th centuries? But, instead of making Islam more palatable to past-Christians (as in the past), does the current trajectory render a diluted Christianity more palatable to a resurgent Islam? Is Hollerich’s synodal “scientific foundation” (for jettisoning sexual morality) simply a natural religion (tending toward a folk religion) like Islam but cross-dressed in modern clothes? Bishop Batzing in an open collar rather than a turban?
Osmosis works in both directions! Syrian-Islam and post-Christian Catholicism, both, as natural religions? No longer convinced, or forthright, or proclaiming (different from proselytizing), or even articulate about the divinely-revealed and gifted life of supernatural grace?
7th and 8th centuries.
Seriously Edward J Baker? How do you extrapolate a judgement of Pope Francis from this article or is it that you have to negate our Pope as some badge of belonging to right thinking?…..
“Of course he needs references to Christ from time to time, but essentially as a prop to confer an imaginary semblance of legitimacy for his agenda.”
……if you alone say so!
In 1989, I, being a callow college student, was predicing that shocking and barbaric crimes like this one would surely knock some sense into the thick-skulled liberals who congregate at such places as Chautauqua. They would surely demand immigration policies to keep such people as this fanatic out of the country. Alas, since that time, there have been many such incidents, some far worse than this one, and the open-borders lunacy on the Left has only become more extreme. As the title of James Burnham’s classic put it, liberalism is the suicide of the West.
And from Tony W, it’s the thick skulled liberals who cop some flack. Indeed they need some sense knocked into them! Observations and insights inspired by what? Chautauqua is not your style? Not mine either but I hardly see it as a contributor to the social/spiritual malaise you are attributing. It’s a big world after all. Somehow for many in the USA it’s getting terribly small?
Ok so lets think for a moment that you can have it your way. All the likes of Chautauqua are done away with. The Immigration policy now prevents all crazies
( Muslims, Aliens and others who encroach upon your national boarder i suppose ) are no longer a problem…. they are gone or only the nice ones remain. Your ‘Christian Nation’ has uniformity of doctrine from east to west, north to south. All people conform to ( your ) world view by some form of decree I suppose. The Christian world view according to the likes of you, because that is what it would be. Do you really think that would address ‘the human condition’ Jesus so clearly enunciated in his teachings as contained in the Gospels? Let your imagination run wild!
Salman has lived under terrible pressure for so many years. I Pray he recovers.