Pro-abortion Sen. Kamala Harris’s attempt to attack U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over a religious freedom case is backfiring.
Last week, Harris, a pro-abortion lawmaker from California, tried to slam Kavanaugh as an extremist because he used the term “abortion-inducing drugs” in reference to certain types of contraception.
However, the Washington Post – and several other fact checkers – labeled Harris’s accusations completely false. Kavanaugh’s comment was about a legal challenge that Priests for Life filed against the Obamacare HHS mandate, not his personal beliefs.
The Washington Post gave Harris “four Pinocchios” (its biggest “whopper” rating) and urged pro-abortion Democrats to “drop this talking point.”
Harris was echoing the talking points of Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups when she claimed Kavanaugh called birth control “abortion-inducing drugs.”
“Kavanaugh chooses his words very carefully, and this is a dog whistle for going after birth control. He was nominated for the purpose of taking away a woman’s constitutionally protected right to make her own health care decisions. Make no mistake – this is about punishing women,” she wrote Friday on Twitter.
Harris implied that the Supreme Court nominee believes all birth control causes abortions, but Kavanaugh did not say that was his personal belief or that all birth control causes abortions. What he did was answer a question about the Priests for Life case, the details of the pro-life group’s arguments and his ruling.
“That was a group that was being forced to provide a certain kind of health coverage over their religious objection to their employees, and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the question was first, was this a substantial burden on the religious exercise? And it seemed to me quite clearly it was,” Kavanaugh said during the hearing last week. “It was a technical matter of filling out a form, in that case with — that — they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were — as a religious matter, objected to.”
SIGN THE PETITION: Vote to Confirm Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh
Harris tried to defend her accusation, saying, “There’s no question that he uncritically used the term ‘abortion-inducing drugs,’ which is a dog whistle term used by extreme anti-choice groups to describe birth control.”
But the Washington Post, Politifact and others disagreed.
According to the Washington Examiner:
The Washington Post fact-checker said Kavanaugh referring to “they said,” demonstrates “he is merely reflecting the plaintiffs’ argument.”
The newspaper also cited Kavanaugh’s dissent in the case, in which he wrote, “They complain that submitting the required form contravenes their religious beliefs because doing so, in their view, makes them complicit in providing coverage for contraceptives, including some that they believe operate as abortifacients.”
Despite the facts being against her, Harris has stubbornly refused to correct her “whopper” of a lie.
Harris’s spokeswoman Lily Adams, who also happens to be former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards’ daughter, defended her boss to Politifact.
“In his full answer, he uses the term uncritically,” Adams said. “He doesn’t say ‘so-called,’ ‘I don’t agree with it,’ there’s no caveat that he gives that he does not agree with the term.”
Harris has not removed her deceptive comments from social media.
Abortion activists fear Kavanaugh, who has served on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for D.C. for more than a decade. He has an extensive record of protecting religious liberty, including in the Priests for Life case, and enforcing restrictions on abortion. Pro-life leaders believe he would do the same on the Supreme Court.
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on his confirmation this fall.
