In an NBC interview last week, Vice President Kamala Harris let slip a shocking position that is rarely, if ever, heard from a politician, much less a presidential candidate. She said that no conscience concessions should be afforded to health-care providers who object to performing abortions.

In other words, doctors, nurses and other medical providers should not be allowed to refuse to perform abortions because of their faith or ethics.

Such a policy would contravene First Amendment protections against government interference in individual conscience. What’s more, her statement was politically boneheaded. To blithely ignore a right of such magnitude within two weeks of Election Day raises other questions, such as, does Harris know what she’s saying?

Freedom of conscience has been sacrosanct since America’s founding, and one of the most important protections against government abuse. Even the most ardent supporter of abortion rights should know better, especially a former state attorney general.

It is no coincidence that the same Supreme Court that ruled in 1973 in favor of national abortion rights also ruled that the Hippocratic oath — first do no harm — was not applicable as a guide for medical practices. This oath, created in 400 B.C., was never legally binding but served as a reminder to physicians of their awesome power in matters of life and death, but it had never been legally binding.

Alas, Harris knew exactly what she was saying, even if she didn’t exactly mean to. When interviewer Hallie Jackson pressed her about religious concessions, Harris said, “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body. … It is so fundamental that we allow women the ability … to make these decisions and not have the government tell her what to do.”

This sounds perfectly reasonable, which is why, though I want to protect women from abortion, I’ve never favored government control of women’s decisions. Autonomy over one’s body is surely sacrosanct, at least if it’s your own. But then, isn’t it also essential that the government not require medical practitioners to perform abortions if they choose not to for reasons of conscience? We allow people to conscientiously object to participating in war.

A logical person might wonder why any woman would seek an abortion from a doctor who doesn’t want to perform one. By the same logic, one might ask why a Colorado gay couple, who sued a bakery that declined to bake a wedding cake for their marriage celebration, didn’t just go to another bakery rather than take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court — with lots of help from activist lawyers.

A partial answer is that such cases are part of a litigation strategy to challenge laws and regulations that activists view as obstacles to societal change. It seems clear that Harris and other progressives want to remove all stigma from abortion. Almost certainly, a doctor who refuses to participate in the death of a fetus will become a defendant in a lawsuit, though I suspect the American Civil Liberties Union won’t be aligned with the plaintiff in such a case.

A national survey found only 18% of practicing OB/GYNs perform abortions.

What Harris and like-minded partisans seem to want is to require that all medical students be trained to perform abortions and that all hospital doctors provide them. One of Harris’s own Senate bills, oddly named the “Do No Harm Act,” would have narrowed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to potentially withhold religious-liberty protections against abortion mandates.

Some Democratic lawmakers have argued that targeting federally funded health care imposes an unfair burden on the poor, as well as minorities, who are more likely to rely on federal health care. But is it fair to require taxpayers to pay for procedures that, in ending a human life, abridge their freedom of conscience?

Problematic for the pro-life effort, of course, is that pregnant women are in charge of their own wombs, notwithstanding laws in several states that basically try to deny this.

Harris’s self-revealing slip in her conversation with Jackson might not matter to voters committed to her pro-choice agenda. But it matters that Americans know exactly what they’re voting for.

Disrespect for freedom of conscience won’t stop at the hospital door. Once we begin chipping away at our most essential protection from government, surrendering unto Caesar, reproductive rights could become the least of our concerns.

Kathleen Parker’s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.