During Tuesday’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Democrats support abortions “after birth,” which he called a form of “execution.”
When debate moderator and ABC News anchor Linsey Davis asked Trump about being “proud” of killing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion and was overturned by the more recent Dobbs decision, he responded by accusing the former governor of West Virginia of allowing babies to be born and then killed. (Trump later corrected himself to mean the former governor of Virginia.)
“He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby,” Trump said. “In other words, we’ll execute the baby.”
He then accused Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, of saying “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay. And that’s not okay with me.”
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” Davis responded. As noted by PolitiFact, Davis is correct: “Abortion” after birth would technically be infanticide, which is illegal in all 50 states.
“The majority of Democrats support abortion access up to fetal viability, when the fetus is able to survive outside of the womb, typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy,” Samantha Putterman wrote for PolitiFact. “For fetuses with very short life expectancies, doctors may induce labor and offer palliative care to make the newborn as comfortable as possible. Some families choose this option when facing diagnoses that limit their babies’ post-birth survival to just minutes or days after delivery, reproductive health experts said.“
Trump’s false statements are in line with his previous comments about “late-term abortions,” which isn’t a technical medical term. As Salon has previously reported, abortion bans are pushing people to terminate later in pregnancy, but less than 1% of abortions in the U.S. occur after 21 weeks of gestation — unlike what many anti-abortion advocates try to portray. The reasons pregnant people might seek abortion care after 21 weeks is generally due to severe medical complications — such as the fetus having a fatal anomaly — or maternal life endangerment.
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