Four pro-abortion lies from the presidential debate

By: Nancy Flanders, originally published September 11, 2024, LiveAction.org

The first debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris took place Tuesday night on ABC News with the two candidates facing off on numerous pressing issues, including abortion. Multiple times, misinformation was shared regarding the current state of abortion laws in the United States — including abortion in cases of medical emergencies and cases of infanticide. Aside from the usual false rhetoric about “Trump’s abortion bans” (which are both figments of the imagination and propaganda), here are four lies told regarding abortion during the debate:

LIE #1: Abortions don’t happen in the ninth month of pregnancy.

Truth: Abortion is legal for any reason up to birth in nine states and DC.

After being asked to discuss his position on abortion, Trump claimed that pro-abortion politicians want abortion to be legal “in the ninth month.”

Harris responded to that comment, saying, “I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade, and as you [pointing to moderator and sorority sister Linsey Davis] rightly mentioned, nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening; it’s insulting to the women of America.”

But this is inaccurate.

Abortion is legal through nine months of pregnancy for any reason in nine states plus Washington, D.C. Those states are Alaska, Vermont, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, and New Jersey. Even more states than this will allow abortions up to birth for certain other reasons, such as to preserve the life or the very broad “health” of the mother. And women are having abortions late in pregnancy for a multitude of reasons that are not related to their health.

As writer Sarah Terzo reported just hours before the debate, an example of this exact situation was shared in the book, “Why I am an Abortion Doctor,” written by abortionist Suzanne Poppema, who was a board member of the National Abortion Federation at the time. Poppema wrote about a woman who came to her abortion business in active labor with a full-term baby. She wrote:

The staff woman told me that there was ‘something weird’ in the woman’s vagina and that should couldn’t find the cervix. This poor woman was writhing on the examination table with fluid here and there, dripping all over the place. The diagnosis was obvious.

The woman was nine months pregnant and in labor and the “something weird” was the baby’s head, which the medical professional at the abortion facility was too undereducated to realize.

Poppema told the woman she was in labor, and the woman replied, “But I can’t have a baby. I won’t have a baby.”

This isn’t the only case of a woman going in for an abortion late in pregnancy. Thousands of children are aborted after 21 weeks — so far, the youngest surviving age of a premature baby — every year. Using data compiled by both the Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Live Action research fellow Carole Novielli reported that abortions committed after 21 weeks are estimated to have been committed on 10,370 preborn babies in 2023. That’s a national death toll of 28 preborn babies older than 21 weeks every single day.

Read more here.

LIE #2: There is no state in which ‘abortion after birth’ is legal.

Truth: ‘After birth abortion’ does occur, and three states have loopholes that allow it.

At one point, debate moderator Davis inappropriately jumped in to debate Trump, telling him, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” She is incorrect.

Colorado, Michigan, and California have all recently enacted laws that include the term “pregnancy outcomes.” These states have moved to make abortion a “right” and allow women to make choices about abortion based on undefined “pregnancy outcomes.” The vague term could encompass situations like birth, miscarriage, abortion, and even death after birth.

Since these “outcomes” are not defined, a post-birth death that is caused deliberately or even by negligence is not excluded.

“Under the rules proposed by this bill, if a child is delivered alive during an abortion the doctors are under no legal compulsion to provide standard medical care as they would in any other circumstance and attempt to preserve the child’s life,” explained Live Action’s VP of Communications and Director of Government Affairs, Noah Brandt. “Medical providers would listen to the mother’s instructions, which could include not providing life-sustaining medical care to the child, which would lead to the child’s death, which most reasonable people would consider infanticide.”

In addition, just because it is illegal to kill a newborn baby doesn’t mean it isn’t happening and that abortion advocates don’t support it. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is in prison currently for actively killing babies who survived his abortion procedures. But he’s not the only one to carry out such horrific acts. Douglas Karpen has been called the “Texas Gosnell,” with claims of infanticide being leveled against him. Abortion advocates will deny that abortion survivors exist at all, but they do.

And what’s worse, pro-abortion politicians have consistently voted down laws to protect abortion survivors from infanticide and medical neglect. Records show that at least 220 children survived abortions from 1999-2023, in eight states alone. Since there are no federal abortion reporting requirements, and because only a handful of states even report abortion survivors, this number is likely much higher — and the fate of the infants is most often death by neglect (a decision to provide no life-sustaining care). Read more here.

Currently, according to the Family Research Council (FRC), three states have repealed laws in place to protect children born alive during abortions from infanticide: Minnesota, Illinois, and New York. Ten other states offer no protections for babies who survive abortions: Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon. Meanwhile, California, Washington, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maine only offer weak protection for abortion survivors such as ensuring care is provided but not a hospitalization, reporting requirements, and/or no penalties for the non-complying doctors. That’s 29 states that fail to fully protect abortion survivors.

As reported by FRC, “There is currently no federal requirement to provide medical care to an infant born alive following an abortion. The Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act, requiring abortionists and any healthcare practitioners present to ‘exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age’ is an attempt to remedy this.

“… The bill failed with forty-four Democrats opposing the life-saving legislation, including now Vice President Kamala Harris, who was a senator representing California at the time. In 2020, the bill failed again, with Harris voting against it a second time.”

LIE #3: Pro-life laws make it “criminal” for a doctor to provide health care.

Truth: No pro-life law prohibits legitimate health care.

Harris claimed during the debate, “… Trump abortion bans… make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state, it provides prison for life. I have talked with women around our country. You want to talk about, ‘This is what people wanted?’ Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot. She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that.”

None of the traumatic stories the media and abortion advocates have promoted in the last two years required induced abortion (intentional killing of a preborn child) as the standard of care for resolving the condition. Women are not being denied treatment for ectopic pregnancy, pregnancy complications, or miscarriage, as Harris claims, because of pro-life laws. These laws all hold exceptions for ectopic pregnancy and the life of the mother and do not include miscarriage treatment (such as the administration of a drug or a D&C after the accidental death of a child in the womb) in their definitions of abortion.

No woman who claims she was ‘forced’ to travel out of state for an abortion actually needed an induced abortion. Every story in the media of a woman denied a so-called ‘medically necessary’ abortion or ‘forced’ to travel for a ‘medically necessary’ abortion has been proven to be misleading and false. No pregnancy complication requires the preborn baby to be deliberately killed prior to an emergency delivery. Read more on that here, here, and here.

In addition, one story of a Texas woman allegedly denied miscarriage care was also proven to be inaccurate. Miscarriages are treated in pro-life states, but because of the lies being spread by pro-abortion media and politicians, women suffering miscarriage are being misled to believe that unless they are offered immediate, emergency surgery, that they are not receiving the standard of care for miscarriage. This is entirely false. Read more on that here.

Pro-life laws ban one thing: the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child in which the desired result of the procedure is a dead baby.

LIE #4: IVF treatment is unavailable under pro-life laws.

Truth: No pro-life law prohibits IVF.

During the debate, Harris claimed, “Understand what is happening under Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments.”

This claim was born from a decision made by the Alabama Supreme Court (which had nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of “abortion ban”), which ruled in February that human embryos created via IVF are to be considered children under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The ruling — in the case of parents suing over the destruction of their embryos — went no further than that, and stated that if embryos are destroyed in an IVF clinic by accident or without the permission of the parents, those parents are legally allowed to file a lawsuit under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

It did not give personhood to embryos, and no fertility clinic in the state was told to cease operations.

Despite this, fertility clinics temporarily ceased IVF treatments while they determined if they could continue practicing IVF knowing the large number of embryos that are destroyed as a standard part of the IVF process. Read more on the mass destruction of embryos during IVF procedures here.

IVF treatments are still widely available in the United States, though pro-lifers considering using the technology should reconsider for these reasons.

Nancy Flanders is an author at LiveAction.org.