Kamala Harris Calls Pro-Life Laws ‘Immoral’ on 1st VP Visit to Abortion Facility

As Kamala Harris became the first vice president to visit an abortion facility, the vice president denounced pro-life laws as “plain old immoral,” said she wanted to “uplift” abortion, praised an abortionist as an “extraordinary health care provider,” and asserted without proof that denying women access to pap smears and breast exams is one of the “potentially intended consequences” of overturning Roe v. Wade.

On Thursday, Vice President Harris toured the St. Paul Health Center, Vandalia — an enormous Planned Parenthood abortion complex with a sometimes troubled past — which, in addition to committing chemical and surgical abortions, also carries out “gender-affirming services,” including cross-sex hormone injections and “surgery referrals.”

“Please do understand that when we talk about a clinic such as this, it is absolutely about health care and reproductive health care,” said Harris. The facility commits abortions until 23 weeks and 5 days, beyond the point some premature children, like 21-week-old Curtis Means, have survived outside the womb.

Harris claimed pro-life laws had unleashed “a very serious health crisis” on the nation by threatening the work of Planned Parenthood, a reliable donor to the Democratic Party.

“In this environment, these attacks against an individual’s right to make decisions about their own body are outrageous and in many instances just plain old immoral,” thundered Harris. “It’s a travesty.”

She went on to claim that the “potentially intended” side effects of overturning Roe v. Wade prevent Planned Parenthood from providing diabetes screenings and vaccines.

After her prepared remarks, Harris introduced Sarah Traxler, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood North Central States, whom Harris called an “extraordinary health care provider.”

“I am a proud abortion provider,” said Traxler, who went on to call Minnesota “a bastion of access for abortion care.” Meanwhile, pro-life advocates outside the facility held signs stating, “Abortion is not healthcare.”

Harris also “thanked the [abortion] clinic employees,” who facilitate its abortions and transgender procedures, reported the Star-Tribune, Minnesota’s largest newspaper.

The visit became the sixth stop in Harris’s five-state “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” campaign, begun in June. Arriving a little before 1 p.m. local time, Harris toured the abortion facility alongside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), Traxler, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, and Planned Parenthood regional President and CEO Ruth Richardson.

The sight of a vice president touring an abortion facility left some speechless. “Unbelievable,” tweeted Family Research Council, the parent organization of The Washington Stand. “Today, VP Harris will try to tell women that if they want the American Dream, they must sacrifice their own children.”

Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said the sight of Biden’s “border czar visiting an abortion clinic today tells you all you need to know about this administration’s priorities.”

Others found the campaign stop repulsive and craven. USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques called Harris’s visit “gross” to “physically go to a place that routinely offers abortions — which involves the ending of a human life’s beginning,” and “a desperate move to keep her job.”

The visit did not surprise pro-life observers, who noted Harris’s abortion activism dating back to her days as attorney general of California. “Kamala Harris has spent her whole career in the pocket of Big Abortion,” said SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “When brave citizen journalists exposed Planned Parenthood’s selling of baby body parts, then-Attorney General Harris prosecuted the whistleblowers,” David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. “The corruption continues as the Biden-Harris [Justice Department] throws nonviolent pro-life activists in prison.”

Others said the most important aspect of the tour is what remained unseen. “What I want to ask the VP is: How extensive was this tour? Did you go to the medical waste facility afterwards? Did you go to the incinerator? Did you see what happens to these little precious babies when their bodies are turned into dust and ashes and they’re incinerated?” asked Christina Bennett, a pro-life journalist with Live Action, on “Washington Watch” Thursday. “I don’t think she was willing to look that deep into the issue.”

Harris’s visit, the first visit of a sitting vice president to an abortion facility, came in part to reassure the party’s base, which claims the Biden-Harris administration has not done enough to promote abortion-on-demand in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs decision. They revolted during the State of the Union address, when Biden’s prepared remarks called for him to say, “Texas law banned abortion” but he instead said, “Texas law banned her ability to act.”

Such a high-level visit proves that “pushing abortion is the central theme in the Biden re-election campaign,” said “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice, who compiled a pro-life voting record in Congress. “If this is really what the Biden-Harris administration has to run on, then it’s a sorry state of affairs for them,” said Ohio State Senator Kristina Roegner (R-Hudson). “It’s abhorrent that anyone would campaign in an abortion clinic.”

Abortion faces no limits in Minnesota, thanks to a provision supported by Walz which considers abortion-until-birth an unalienable right. “Every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to continue the pregnancy and give birth, or obtain an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise this fundamental right,” it states. Thanks to the lax state of Minnesota law, Traxler claimed that she has committed abortions on expectant mothers from more pro-life states including South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Texas, Alabama, Wyoming, Florida, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

After a decade of cautiously endorsing abortion if it is “safe, legal, and rare,” the Democratic Party compiled a long record of praising abortionists and extolling their work. The vice president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, called and personally thanked abortionists “to thank them for their work,” NBC News reported in June, shortly after the ticket was endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and EMILY’s List.

Barack Obama became the first sitting president to speak to Planned Parenthood in 2013. Obama concluded his remarks, “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.”

“We don’t want to see our elected officials going to abortion clinics and parading around and pretending that that’s a charity that’s aiding women. In reality, we know that that industry has stolen so much from us as a community and particularly the black community. It’s absolutely strategic,” said Bennett on Thursday. “The abortion industry targets women of color primarily. That’s the way it’s been since the beginning, with Margaret Sanger in the Negro Project in the 1930s and 1940s. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry was founded on racism and eugenics and population control.”

Polls indicate voters’ top concerns are illegal immigration and inflation. A Gallup poll released at the end of last month found abortion did not rate in the top 15 issues of concern to voters in the 2024 election. However, in exit polls on Super Tuesday voters ranked abortion as roughly tied with foreign policy as their second-most important issue. A Rasmussen poll released Tuesday found the economy ranks 20 points higher than abortion among voters’ priorities. “Ohioans and Americans are not going to the ballot box to vote for president based on abortion. It’s just simply not happening,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life.

But the issue of abortion electrifies Democratic voters, according to observers on both sides of the aisle. Right-leaning Rasmussen found more than twice as many Democrats called abortion a “very important” topic. “It’s the number one issue working for Democrats at every level in office,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told The New York Times. “Everything from county commissioners to presidents are being elected around this issue.”

Planned Parenthood committed 374,155 abortions and received $670.4 million in taxpayer funding during its 2021-2022 fiscal year. Planned Parenthood also dedicated $50 million to supporting pro-abortion candidates in the 2022 midterm elections. 

Harris did not visit any of the dozens of pro-life churches or pregnancy resource centers attacked after an as-yet-unnamed Supreme Court staffer leaked the Dobbs decision in May 2022.

“In Minnesota, there are over 90 pregnancy resource centers that are working to help women achieve their dreams alongside their beautiful children,” tweeted FRC. “Kamala Harris should tour one of those and see the difference.”

In 2020, Vice President Mike Pence became the first vice president to visit a pro-life pregnancy resource center, touring Florida’s A Woman’s Place Medical Clinic. “I saw a wonderful clinic, heard about all the volunteers that stepped forward, along with registered nurses and health care professionals,” he said.

“We need leaders who will champion national minimum protections at least when babies in the womb can feel pain, to stop Planned Parenthood and the Democrats’ all-trimester, no-limits abortion agenda. They are extreme and wildly out of step with America,” said Dannenfelser.

Whatever their position on the issue, everyone can agree with one of Harris’s statements on Thursday: “Elections matter,” she said.