Vice President Kamala Harris and ABC moderators made comments about abortion during the presidential debate that were factually incorrect. Former President Donald Trump was correct. Worse, the media, by and large, are siding with the false narrative.
Harris was asked by Linsey Davis if she supported any restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion. “I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade,” she said. She added that “nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It’s insulting to women of America.”
Trump responded saying, Harris “would allow abortion in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month.” She replied, “Come on.” He followed up saying, “You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month.” She answered, “That’s not true.”
Trump won the argument.
Late-term abortions, contrary to what Harris said, are more common than what she contends. In 1995, Dr. George Tiller told his fans, “We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.”
Ron Fitzsimmons used to tell the media that partial-birth abortions—where the baby is 80 percent born—were extremely rare. Then in 1995 he went on national TV and admitted that he “lied through [his] teeth,” saying he was just spouting “the party line.”
In 2019, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute admitted that at least 12,000 late-term abortions take place annually in the U.S. In 2023, fact checkers at the Washington Post conceded that at least 10,000 late-term abortions take place each year.
Quite frankly, under Roe v. Wade, abortion-on-demand, while not a de jure right (it was not permitted after viability except in limited cases), was a de facto right. For proof, consider Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe; it opened the door to abortion-on-demand.
In Roe, the high court said the states may outlaw abortion “except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.” The ruling in Doe defined what an “appropriate medical judgment” was. It entailed the “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the women’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient.”
Not surprisingly, every state law that attempted to limit post-viability abortions to those necessary for the physical health of the women failed in court when challenged. In effect, the joint decisions in Roe and Doe legalized abortion up until birth. So when Harris says she accepts Roe, that means she wants to make all abortions legal, at any time during pregnancy.
Moreover, Harris voted against the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” that would protect unborn children by prohibiting abortion at 20 weeks, a point where the child is able to feel great pain.
Then there is the matter of governors allowing babies to die after a botched abortion.
Trump addressed this issue by initially misidentifying the culpable governor as being from West Virginia—he later corrected his mistake saying the governor was from Virginia (he was referring to Ralph Northam). Substantively, what Trump said was basically right. He accused the governor of contending that “the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.”
Here is what Virginia Gov. Northam opined in 2019. If a baby survived an abortion, he said, “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” So while the baby would not be “executed,” per se, he could be put down, or left to die, after he was “kept comfortable.” That’s infanticide. There is no other word for it.
Northam is not alone among Democrats on this issue. Just prior to his stunning admission, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that allowed premature babies who survive a chemical abortion to be denied treatment.
At the federal level in 2019, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was blocked by Senate Democrats. It would require that a baby born alive during an abortion must be afforded the same care that would apply to all babies delivered at the same gestational age. Harris was one of the senators who voted to kill the bill. On January 11, 2023, all but two congressional Democrats voted against this same bill.
It is one thing for Harris to be wrong—candidates for public office frequently misrepresent their record—but it is quite another when the media misrepresent the truth. And it is infuriating when they set themselves up as “fact checkers” during a presidential debate and are later proven wrong. ABC disgraced itself.
Moderators should moderate. They are not paid to be commentators.
