Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said Thursday during a sit-down with abortion rights advocates at the Georgia Statehouse that laws prohibiting or limiting abortion rights are “against Christian faith.”
“If you are a person of the Christian faith, one of the tenets of our faith is free will,” Gillibrand said at a press conference, according to CBS News.
{mosads}”One of the tenets of our democracy is that we have a separation of church and state, and under no circumstances are we supposed to be imposing our faith on other people,” the Democratic presidential candidate added. “And I think this is an example of that effort.”
Gillibrand’s remarks came at a roundtable discussion with abortion providers and physicians, Georgia legislators and women’s rights activists following the passage of new “heartbeat” abortion legislation in the state. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp (R), bars doctors from performing an abortion once a fetus’s heartbeat is detected, typically around six weeks into a pregnancy before most women know they are pregnant.
The sit-down also came one day after Alabama’s governor signed a bill to ban almost all abortions. The ban, which is the nation’s most restrictive, would prohibit abortion in nearly all cases, including rape or incest.
Gillibrand added that she wants to “make sure that every woman in America, no matter what state she lives in or how much money she has in her pocket, can have guaranteed access to safe, legal abortion,” according to The Washington Post.
She also said she wants to end the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits using federal money to cover abortion costs.
The 2020 presidential hopeful called upon other candidates to make their stances clear on abortion and said that if President Trump wants to “fight” on the issue that he will lose.
“If this is a fight that President Trump wants, if this is a fight that he wants with the American people, if this is a fight he wants with America’s women, it is a fight he will have and it is a fight he will lose,” she said.
Gillibrand said earlier this month that she would only nominate judges to the Supreme Court that support the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling. The senator, who is one of more than 20 people running for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, joined a chorus of other Democrats in condemning the Alabama abortion ban this week.