What Kamala Harris said about faith and abortion during Tuesday’s debate

Vice President Kamala Harris has made defending abortion rights a pillar of her presidential campaign, but that doesn’t mean she’s given up on trying to get support from religious voters who see the issue differently than she does.
During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Harris referenced faith and morality during her remarks on abortion, arguing that some state-level abortion bans are immoral.
“In over 20 states, there are … bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state it provides prison for life,” she said, adding that there are “bans that make no exception even for rape and incest.”
She continued, “Understand what that means: A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral.”
Harris added that religious Americans are among those who take issue with these abortion laws.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” she said.
During Tuesday’s debate, Harris did not offer much detail on what she would want abortion policy to look like if she became president.
She did say she wanted to reinstate “the protections of Roe v. Wade,” a 1973 ruling that recognized a constitutional right to abortion care until the point of fetal viability. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Former President Donald Trump criticized Harris’ comments, arguing that a policy reinstating Roe v. Wade would never make it through Congress.
Trump said that the current system of allowing states to set their own abortion policies is what “everybody wanted.”
“I did something that nobody thought was possible. The states are now voting,” he said.
Trump added that he’s not in favor of a national abortion ban.
“But it doesn’t matter because this issue has now been taken over by the states,” he said.
Harris, who identifies as Christian and belongs to a Baptist church, has made similar comments about religion and abortion in the past.
For example, in 2022, just before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she said that supporting Roe v. Wade means supporting a woman’s right to base an abortion decision on her own values, including her religious beliefs.
“To support Roe v. Wade and all it stands for, does not mean giving up your beliefs,” she said, according to Catholic News Agency. “It is simply about agreeing that a woman should be able to make that decision with her faith leader, with her family, with her physician. And that the government should not be making that decision for her.”
Then and now, Harris faced pushback for that sentiment.
“‘You don’t have to abandon your faith’ (to endorse termination of life in the womb) … Yes, Madam Vice President, you do,” argued the Rev. JD Greear, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, in an X post shared during Tuesday night’s debate.
Surveys have repeatedly shown that religious Americans do not speak with one voice on abortion rights.
For example, a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year found that 59% of Catholics, 71% of Black Protestants and 64% of white nonevangelical Protestants believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
But one concern raised by religious voters about Harris’ leadership is that she hasn’t respected the people of faith who do oppose abortion. That concern is part of a broader debate over Harris’ religious freedom record.
In August, leaders of pro-life pregnancy centers in California told Catholic News Agency that they felt persecuted during Harris’ time as the state’s attorney general. Harris supported a law that forced the centers to display information about where to access abortions, the article said.