WaPo Writer Fact-Checks Harris: ‘Late-Term Abortions Are Not a Myth. They’re Happening

By: S.A. McCarthy, originally published September 27, 2024, The Washington Stand

The mainstream media has been running cover for the pro-abortion presidential campaign run by Vice President Kamala Harris, allowing the candidate’s false assertions to go mostly unchallenged in her race to the White House. But while ABC News may have refused to fact-check Harris’s presidential debate arguments, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with The Washington Post is fact-checking the vice president’s lies about abortion.

In response to Harris’s claim during this month’s presidential debate that late-term abortions are “not happening,” Kathleen Parker, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2010, published an article in the Post last week arguing “Late-term abortions are not a myth. They’re happening.”

Parker began by noting that Harris and her allies have talked “a lot about the 14 states that have banned access to abortion and the 27 others that have restrictions based on gestational duration.” She went on, “But we’ve heard little to nothing about the nine states and the District of Columbia that allow abortion no matter what the age of the fetus. This basically means up until the moment of birth.” Parker continued, “Democrats bent on restoring abortion rights would have us believe that no state would allow a fully formed baby to be aborted, and it is rational to believe this. But such is not always the case.”

To illustrate her point, she cited the example of Warren Hern, an 86-year-old abortionist in Colorado who was profiled last year by The Atlantic. Hern’s website advertises the fact that he commits late-term, third-trimester abortions. “Hern estimated that about half of his later-term abortions are of healthy babies,” Parker reported, noting that Hern’s abortion facility commits roughly a dozen second- and third-trimester abortions weekly. She continued, “Sometimes, in Hern’s procedures, a fetus can be removed whole, but other times it has to be dismembered. All in another wretched day’s work, I guess.”

Parker observed, “It took a while for Hern to become comfortable with his work, which at first took an emotional toll on him. … [H]e would see the tiny fetuses with still-beating hearts that he had removed from their mothers’ wombs. He had bad dreams and sometimes wept, wondering what he was doing.” The journalist added, “Hern felt that it was fair for him to suffer emotional distress as part of the job, and he says he knew deep down that he was helping, not hurting women. This is surely debatable.”

Hern has also committed at least two abortions for the purpose of sex-selection, Parker reported: a baby boy was killed when his mother wanted a girl, and a baby girl was killed when her mother didn’t want a girl. “Do we really want to codify this deadly game of baby roulette?” Parker asked. She continued, “I’d like to think sex-selection abortion is beyond the comprehension of most people. But abortion culture has had the undesirable, if predictable, effect of making us less horrified by worse and worse.”

Noting that by the end of the first trimester an unborn baby has fingerprints, veins, and organs, and female babies already have visible ovaries, Parker asked, “If that’s not a human life, what is it?” By the end of the second trimester, Parker observed, the unborn baby’s brain is active, he opens his eyes, he wakes and sleeps. “This is no matter to the nine states and the District of Columbia,” Parker wrote. She noted that by 32 weeks, the baby is preparing to be born. “For the remaining seven to eight weeks, it gains a third to half its birth weight, which may be why Hern prefers a 32-week limit, although he’ll operate even later. Fully formed babies are a lot more trouble to destroy,” Parker said.

Referring to Harris’s recent penchant for adopting Republican policies she once derided, the Pulitzer Prize-winner concluded, “So, yes, Madam Vice President, late-term abortions are happening and not just for anomalies or medical reasons. As we’ve learned, you’re willing to change your positions based on new information. I hope this helps.”

Harris’s abortion lies have not been limited to the topic of late-term abortions. Over the past week, the vice president has faced criticism from doctors and OB/GYNs for her talking points on pro-life state laws, specifically in Georgia. Harris has claimed that two women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, were left to die because the Peach State’s pro-life protections prevented doctors from treating the pregnant women. Medical professionals have pointed out that the women developed sepsis because they took abortion pills and that Georgia’s laws would not have prevented medical care for either woman — but lies about those lies prevented Thurman and Miller from seeking the medical care that they needed.

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.