The portion of Tuesday night’s debate centered on abortion was an object lesson in how this issue is treated by the radical left. Unsurprisingly, the moderators’ questions were designed to mis-frame the issue and to never pin Vice President Kamala Harris down on any limits she might support. (That’s because she doesn’t support any.)
Moderator Linsey Davis opened the abortion discussion saying former President Donald Trump had reversed course on his support for Florida’s Heartbeat Law. She was referencing a question he had been asked by NBC about Florida’s Amendment 4. Trump said the six-week ban was too early. But later that week he said he would vote against Amendment 4.
But this actually does not constitute a reversal.
Amendment 4 would invent a right to unlimited abortion in the Florida constitution. It would not simply reverse the six-week limit; it would reverse a 15-week limit, a 20-week limit, and, for all practical purposes, any limit.
So, as Breitbart News has pointed out, it is perfectly consistent for someone to say that they oppose both the six-week limit and Amendment 4. And that’s where President Trump is.
Trump has said repeatedly, including during the debate, that he opposes later-term abortions, which the Democrats — and Harris — fully support, celebrate, encourage, and want us to fund.
Trump did talk about abortion in the ninth month, which Amendment 4 and similar amendments in nine other states would allow, as would the federal Women’s Health Protection Act, which Harris supports. Of course, the moderators did not mention that horrific piece of legislation and allowed Harris to repeat her time-worn phrase that she would “put back in place the protections of Roe v Wade.” But as pro-lifers have been pointing out since 1973, even Roe allowed for third-trimester abortion. The “protections” of Roe guarantee no protections for the human in the womb.
As for states that have enacted protections for the unborn since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Harris said “…in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care.”
That is a lie — again, often repeated and never challenged, including by the debate moderators. No law in any state prohibits physicians from treating women who are suffering from miscarriage or life-threatening conditions related to their pregnancies. If there are doctors who have denied such care to women, they are the problem, not the laws.
As for the more than 20 states that have limited abortion since the fall of Roe, Harris’s characterization of them as “Trump abortion bans” is yet another lie. They are not Trump’s bans; they are laws that the people and their elected representatives put in place. (It’s that thing Democrats like to call “democracy.”) That is precisely what Roe prohibited and the Democrats want to prohibit again, through “restoring” Roe and through the state amendments.
For Harris and her party, abortion is a one-dimensional issue, inasmuch as it is discussed as though it only impacts the woman and no mention is made of the fact that a second life is involved. The baby who is actually being killed, brutally and often past the point where he or she feels pain, is never acknowledged.
Harris proclaimed, “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.” But she has clearly abandoned both faith and humanity by failing to acknowledge that our government has a clear mandate to protect all its citizens, including those in the womb. What abortion does to a woman’s body is to kill the separate, unique individual growing within her.
Davis’s “fact check” on infanticide (she said there is no state in the country where it’s legal to kill a baby after birth) completely overlooked Harris’s opposition as a U.S. senator to a federal law requiring emergency life-saving care for babies who survive abortion. We know this happens. In fact, Harris running mate Gov. Tim Walz had proof it was happening in his state of Minnesota so he repealed the Born-Alive law and the requirement that a record be kept of newborn survivors of abortion. There are the Democrats again erasing the victims of abortion.
President Trump hit the right note on abortion during the debates. As our Priests for Life/McLaughlin poll showed earlier this year, over 60 percent of voters prefer a pro-life candidate – even one who admits of exceptions – and who works to help mothers have their babies, over an abortion-without-limits candidate.
The Democrats hope the abortion issue will help them in the election. But a deeper analysis reveals that on this issue – like on many others — it is actually President Trump and the Republican Party who are closer in their views to the average American voter. And Tuesday’s debate showed exactly that.
Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life and the national pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. The books he has authored include Abolishing Abortion and Proclaiming the Message of Life.