The Left is attacking — sometimes literally — places that offer genuine help for mothers who need it.
The Left is attacking — sometimes literally — places that offer genuine help for mothers who need it.
A fter the proper demise of Roe v. Wade, plenty of Americans across the ideological spectrum are concerned with ensuring that women facing unplanned pregnancies have the resources they need at the beginning of motherhood. Now that fewer women will turn to the deadly “solution” of abortion, their needs will surely increase. Pro-abortion or pro-life, many of us want to see these needs met. Vice President Kamala Harris does not.
The mission to help these women isn’t necessarily new: It’s why more than 3,000 nonprofit pregnancy resource centers around the nation work to serve pregnant moms in difficult circumstances and have done so for decades.
As needs for pregnant women and their unborn and born babies increase, the obvious response is to bolster support for charitable organizations like pregnancy centers. After all, the free diapers, formula, baby clothes, maternity clothes, child-birth education, prenatal vitamins, and much more that these centers provide are meeting mothers’ critical and basic needs. In 2019 alone, U.S. pregnancy centers gave away nearly $270 million in free essential medical-, educational-, and material-support services — and that was when the U.S. was locked into a regime allowing elective abortion into the sixth month of pregnancy nationwide, with many states permitting it until birth.
But don’t look to the Biden administration to help empower and encourage women in this way. Vice President Kamala Harris has instead decided to use her platform to encourage government officials who are “taking on” pregnancy resource centers, as though charities helping women in need were some kind of public enemy. Harris would apparently use the force of government to shut down these centers that offer free assistance to women, which she calls. . . wait for it. . . “predatory practices.” And why? Because the generous assistance they offer doesn’t involve helping women kill unborn babies.
The vice president’s call for a “taking on” of pregnancy centers comes on the heels of at least 72 violent or vandalistic attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life organizations since the Dobbs opinion leaked. It echoes Senator Elizabeth Warren’s recent rant against pregnancy care centers, in which she thundered that “we need to shut them down all around the country!” Rather than condemn the violence, our first female vice president urges more and different means of cutting off a lifeline to millions of expectant mothers.
Like others in the Biden administration, Harris has an unfortunate track record of targeting private individuals and organizations with pro-life views. As attorney general of California, she infamously prosecuted undercover journalist David Daleiden after he exposed Planned Parenthood’s illegal sale of fetal body parts, even ordering a baseless raid on his apartment. Harris then co-sponsored a law that forced California pro-life pregnancy centers to post signs advertising free abortions. (The U.S. Supreme Court struck down that law in a case my legal team, Alliance Defending Freedom, briefed and argued.)
Meanwhile, Harris celebrates Planned Parenthood, which receives hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars while pitting pregnant women against their babies for a profit. According to its 2021 annual report, Planned Parenthood performed 41 abortions for every prenatal service it provided. As usual, “pro-choice” looks suspiciously like “pro-abortion.”
What a missed opportunity for Harris to be a role model — a successful wife, mother, and professional — and celebrate the beauty of motherhood. Anyone who claims to care about female empowerment should immediately stop assaulting places that empower women for free when they need it most. But the vice president seems to believe that only “access to abortion” gives women agency. She even doubled down on that lie in a national speaking tour, in which she attacked pregnancy centers that walk alongside women to support and encourage them in motherhood.
When nearly three-fourths of women who choose abortion cite financial reasons for that choice, why not help them eliminate their material concerns instead of eliminating their child? Tell them they can be a good mother — and help show them the way — instead of telling them they can’t. That’s the priceless, life-saving work that pregnancy centers do free of charge, and hundreds of thousands of precious humans live among us because of it.
If political leaders find that to be a threat, it’s baffling what they’re afraid of.