Kamala Harris Compares Abortion Bans to Chattel Slavery: ‘Claiming Ownership over Human Bodies’

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks about the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and the Build
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Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday compared the supporters of abortion restrictions to those who enslaved black people.

“We know, NAACP, that our country has a history of claiming ownership over human bodies,” Harris said as the audience applauded. “And today, extremists, so-called leaders are criminalizing doctors and punishing women for making healthcare decisions for themselves.”

Harris made her comments during a speech to the annual NAACP convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

She claimed the Supreme Court “took away a constitutional right” from Americans by overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing the states to regulate abortion.

The vice president also claimed that religious Americans could support abortions and that the government should not be involved with the description of innocent life in the womb.

“[I]t’s important to note that to support a woman’s ability — not her government, but her — to make that decision does not require anyone to abandon their faith or their beliefs,” she said. “It just requires us to agree the government shouldn’t be making that decision for her.”

Harris warned that Republican states that were limiting abortions were also trying to pass election integrity laws.

“[T]hey’re passing laws, the same people — laws that ban drop boxes and restrict early voting … Undemocratic laws. Un-American laws,” she said.

Harris urged the NAACP to work toward electing two more Democrat senators to the United States Senate so that Biden could move forward on breaking the filibuster to make abortion rights federally legal.

“We will not — and the President has been clear — we will not let the filibuster stand in our way of our most essential rights and freedoms,” she said.

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