That late-term abortion "fact check" during the debate

The enduring mythology of Roe and how it prevents very few facts from sneaking through to the American public

During the ABC debate Tuesday night, Donald Trump rightly stated that Democrats stand for abortion up to birth and indeed, after birth. (Tomorrow our Home Front podcast will go over that debate, so look out for it!)

Linsey Davis, the ABC so-called moderator who actually inserted herself in the debate, “fact checked” Trump by flatly stating “there is no state where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

And when pressed, Kamala Harris took up the advantage and like a schoolchild proudly giving teacher the “right answer” on restrictions, said she supports reinstating the protections [sic] of Roe vs. Wade.

We’ll get to Roe in a minute.

But here is the actual fact check on late-term and post-birth abortion, i.e. infanticide:

Please note that Minnesota, the state of which Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, is governor, allows abortions with no restrictions on gestational age — that is, allows them to full term.

But there’s more: Tim Walz repealed his state’s “born alive” protection:

Gov. Tim Walz and the Democratically-controlled state House and Senate repealed the "Born Alive Infants Protection Act" in 2023, along with all other state restrictions on abortion.

Eneacted in 2015, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act stated that "a born-alive infant as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law."

Additionally, the act required that "all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to preserve the life and health of the born alive infant."

Five babies died after they were born alive due to a failed induced abortion in 2021, according to an annual report from the Minnesota Department of Health.

That annual report is no longer released, due to Walz's repeal.

From the Family Research Council:

There is currently no federal requirement to provide medical care to an infant born alive following an abortion… Importantly, even with only 10 states having ever required reporting, there are 277 known cases of infants born alive following an abortion.

Sadly, the practice of leaving babies to die (horribly, in the pain of dehydration and starvation) after a failed abortion is not new. We have on our bookshelves a book published in 1984, Death in the Nursery by James Manney and John Blattne, describing the practice then, a decade after Roe.

One of the most enduring myths of our time is that Roe vs. Wade only allowed abortion in the first trimester except in extreme cases. Leaving aside its use of the spurious trimester distinction, as if each stage of development deals with an entirely different creature in the womb, Roe might be the emblem of abortion jurisprudence, but Doe vs. Bolton, ruled on the same day, is the defining case.

And Doe made distinctions without a difference. In the end, even in the third trimester, which now more than ever is the time of viability outside the womb, Doe equated “life of the mother” with her health, including her mental health, thus enshrining the legal access of the mother to abortion at any stage in the pregnancy.

Pro-abortionists are, above all, masters at controlling rhetoric. As we say in the pro-life movement, they kill babies — can you be so surprised that they also lie?

I meet nice older people — Catholic, church-going ladies even — all the time who think that abortion in the US is only legal in the first trimester. That is the enduring mythology of Roe, promulgated by its bards and story-tellers.

We saw some of that talent with Kamala Harris at the debate. In a voice dripping with empathy, she outlined the plight of a woman caught in desperate circumstances. She appealed to the ignorance of the public and dangled Roe as if the state of things before Dobbs was the mere “safe but rare” figment of Americans’ imaginations so carefully cultivated by the Left.

Virtually all abortions happen before 15 weeks gestation. You would think, if a pro-abortionist could be said to be rational, he would be satisfied with restrictions sought by “moderate” law-makers. The reality is stark: the Left will never accept any limitations because they want to establish the power to do away with persons they deem unworthy — any person. They do not believe that we are bound to protect innocent life.