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Texas: Pregnant Teenager Dies After Going to Three Hospitals, Turned Away by First Two

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2024 //
12

ProPublica tells the story of 18-year-old Nevaeh Crain. She was pregnant. She was holding a baby shower to celebrate the imminent birth of the baby. At her party, she collapsed in pain. Her mother took her to three different hospitals. The first two sent her away without treating her. The doctors and nurses in Texas hospitals are aware of the draconian abortion ban in Texas; it threatens to harshly punish any medical personnel who are involved in an abortion with loss of their license and as much as 99 years in prison.

Would anyone risk their own life to save the pregnant girl who was screaming in pain?

Nevaeh Crain died because of Texas’ extreme abortion ban. She was killed by politicians and religious zealots. She was killed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. She should be alive.

ProPublica reported:

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care. 

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing. 

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency. 

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.

Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.

Open the link to continue reading.

Categories Cruelty, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Gender, Health, Texas

Carol Burris: Why Older Women Will Not Vote for Trump

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2024 //
8

The Iowa poll conducted by pollster Ann Seltzer, published in the Des Moines Register, is considered one of the best in the country. When it was released, it shocked everyone following the election closely. It found that Kamala Harris was leading Trump by 47%-44% in deep-red Iowa. That’s still within the margin of error. The decisive factor that led to Harris’s lead was the gender gap, especially among women over 65. That demographic, usually Republican, favored Harris by a 2-1 margin.

Carol Burris, a mother and grandmother, explained why Harris is favored by older women.

She writes:

The latest Iowa poll shows Harris’s incredible support among senior women (63% -Harris to 28% Trump.) Pundits are surprised. This 71-year-old is not. That is because women over 65 remember.

 

We remember the world that Trump and Vance represent.

 

·      We remember needing our husband’s consent to get a credit card.

·      We remember when single women were referred to as “old maids,” –we hear that again in the “cat lady” remarks.

·      We remember when the doors to a professional life were closed, and women who used childcare if they could find it were considered “bad mommies.”

·      We remember the era of coat-hanger abortions.

·      We remember when there was no IVF, and those who desperately wanted a child were disappointed.

·      We remember when single motherhood made women an outcast, and the child was called a “bastard.”

·      We remember the days of McCarthyism; we either lived them, or they were a recent, chilling memory.

·      We remember when the KKK marched with impunity.

·      We remember the tasteless sexist humor of Milton Berle and when Jackie Gleason regularly vowed to punch his wife Alice “to the moon.” And a nation laughed.

·      We remember the aggression and cruel repression of the Soviet Union in Europe, now returning in Vladimir Putin.

·      We remember when the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated.

We remember when gay women were called, Dykes and Butches and lived in fear of exposure.

·      And we remember an era when the common good was reflected in our religious values and “the least of these” were considered our brothers and sisters, not invaders and the eaters of pets.

 

We know the Donald Trumps of the world. We grew up with them. He belongs to our generation. We understand how they think.  We remember the days when we were “protected whether we liked it or not.” 

 

And we will not return.  We love ourselves, our daughters, and our granddaughters too much. The price of eggs will come down no matter who is elected. We are unwinding from COVID inflation like the rest of the world.  Listen to those who remember. 

Categories Cruelty, Elections, Gender, Harris, Kamala, Iowa, Trump

Jess Piper: Rural Women Are Angry About Abortion Bans

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2024 //
17

Jess Piper is a former teacher who lives in a farm in Missouri. She is an energetic Democrat who spends time getting out the vote in rural areas. As she explains in her latest blog post, she has spent lots of time in Iowa.

She explains the startling results of the latest poll from Iowa. It’s a ruby-red state, but the highly respected Selzer poll reported that Harris has taken the lead in a state that Trump won twice.

The biggest issue, she says, is abortion. The fight against the abortion ban is led by mothers and grandmothers, who are defending their daughters and granddaughters from entering a world where they might die for lack of health care.

By the way, dynamic Jess Piper will speak at the Network for Public Education Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio, April 5-6, 2025.

She writes:

Here’s the thing that a lot of pollsters have been getting wrong: they don’t think abortion will be the reason that older women choose to vote for a Democrat. And I know that isn’t true. I have talked to hundreds of folks on the ground in places like Iowa. I’ve spoken to so many women.

Abortion may be seen as a political strategy to some, but it is life or death for women and girls.

I spoke in Mt Ayr, Iowa last year. The population is 1600. I was again summoned by the Ringgold County Democrats led by a woman. We met in a woman-owned bookstore. There was wine and food and desserts and they gave me one of my favorite t-shirts. It says “Hard Working Rural Democrat” and I wear it often. 

Over half of the folks who showed up to this Mt Ayr event were teachers. That’s very often the case in the spaces I travel to speak…they are quiet, but they always show up. You’d think with all of those teachers that the topic would be public schools and that is indeed where we started, but the Q and A session turned into a forum on abortion bans. Most of the women at the event were grandmothers — they worried that their daughters would need reproductive care and could die waiting for it under an abortion ban. 

That is a fair worry. A worry that women have been dealing with since the creation of the United States.

“I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

~Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams, 1776.

We have been fighting for equal rights under the law for hundreds of years. 

I have been in Council Bluffs. I have spoken in Iowa City. I traveled to Sioux City. I have been to Mount Pleasant. I have traveled the state for the past two years and I can tell you that while I am excited to see the data on Iowa, I have been telling you the stories for a while now. The rural stories — the organizing stories. 

The poll reinforces what we are seeing on the ground.

The Selzer Poll shows that Trump still leads in rural spaces in Iowa, but here is what I know: he’s losing his grip on those folks. And the reason? Women voters. Rural women voters.

The Republican ban on abortion was a step too far for most women…even for Independent and Republican voters. Especially with those rural voters who believe in limited government. Who believe that lawmakers don’t belong in doctor’s offices. Who believe in freedom.

I also have to take every poll with a grain of salt. 

We know that polls don’t win elections — voters will decide who takes the Presidency on Tuesday. But, here is what I am telling you; the vibes have changed. I am in the rooms and you have a reason to be hopeful. You have reason to think Iowa may just go for Harris and wonder if it can happen there, where else may it happen?

Categories Elections, Gender, Health, Iowa

Trump Says He Will Protect Women “Whether They Like It or Not”

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
12

The New York Times reported on Trump’s rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin yesterday, where he laid out the Trump Paternalism Doctrine.

He said he would protect women “whether they like it or not.”

Like he “protected” women by stripping away their reproductive rights?

Like he “protected” the women who accused him of sexual assault?

Women want to make their own decisions.

The story in the Times by Nicholas Nehamas and Erica L. Green pulled no punches, offered no “both sides”:

Former President Donald J. Trump said at a rally on Wednesday that he would protect American women “whether the women like it or not” — remarks that he cast as paternal but only served as reminders to many of his critics of his history of misogynistic statements and a civil court case that found him liable for sexual abuse…

Ms. Harris quickly sought to respond, writing on X: “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.” Her campaign posted a series of videos on social media emphasizing Mr. Trump’s remarks. And it sent out a news release that blared: “In Wisconsin, Trump reminds women how little he values their choices…

Over the course of the campaign, Mr. Trump and his allies have made a series of misogynistic, sexualized attacks against Ms. Harris. In August, Mr. Trump used his social media website to amplify a crude remarkabout her that falsely suggested she had traded sexual favors to help her political career. On Sunday, at his Madison Square Garden rally, one speaker referred to Ms. Harris as having “pimp handlers.” And a super PAC financed by his ally Elon Musk released an ad that called her a “C word,” although the ad eventually revealed that the word was “communist,” rather than the slur for women.

Mr. Trump has been accused by roughly two dozen women of sexual misconduct. In 2016, the “Access Hollywood” tape caught him boasting about grabbing women by the genitals, remarks he later dismissed as “locker room banter.” The writer E. Jean Carroll said he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. In civil proceedings, Mr. Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll, and ordered to pay hefty fines. Mr. Trump is appealing the case.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Gender, Trump

Trump Calls Madison Square Garden Rally “an Absolute Love Fest”

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2024 //
11

The day after Trump’s Madison Square Garden, the media reacted with shock to the raw racism and misogyny on display. The New York Times reported:

Former President Donald J. Trump sought to head off the major speech Vice President Kamala Harris was planning to deliver Tuesday night by casting her as responsible for all of the nation’s ills while also attempting to draw attention away from bigoted and racist remarks at his rally in New York.

Two days after he hosted a rally at Madison Square Garden where several speakers made racist and vulgar statements, Mr. Trump accused Ms. Harris of running “a campaign of absolute hate.”

Mr. Trump then headed to Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state, for two campaign stops. Ms. Harris is expected to speak at the Ellipse, the same park near the White House where Mr. Trump marshaled his supporters to descend on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The setting for Ms. Harris’s remarks will provide her campaign with a symbolic moment to go along with its increasingly blunt warnings about the dangers posed by Mr. Trump, who Democrats say is unstable and will run roughshod over democratic norms if he returns to the White House.

Mr. Trump’s allies have shown anxiety that the backlash to the Madison Square Garden event, and descriptions of him as a racist and a fascist, may be breaking through to segments of voters in battleground states. On Tuesday, however, the former president sought to attack Ms. Harris with the very accusations he himself has been facing, telling a group of supporters and reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that her message “has been a message of hate and division.”

In his remarks, Mr. Trump continued to push back against criticisms of his rally — which he called, unprompted, “an absolute love fest” — mocking Democrats who have pointed out that a pro-Nazi rally was held at Madison Square Garden in 1939.

Election Day is one week from today. Here’s what else to know:

  • Madison Square Garden rally fallout: Republicans moved swiftly to distance themselves from remarks disparaging Puerto Rico made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who was one of the opening speakers at Mr. Trump’s New York rally. The island’s Republican Party chairman is demanding an apology, and the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny stepped up his condemnation of the remarks on Tuesday.
  • Hinting at a vulgar taunt: An ad from Elon Musk’s PAC refers to Ms. Harris as a “C Word” — eventually calling her a “communist” — in an allusion to an insult against women that is one of the most obscene words in American English.
Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Gender, Racism, Trump

Barbara Bush, Daughter of GW Bush, is Campaigning for Kamala

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

Barbara Bush, daughter and granddaughter of Republican presidents, endorsed Kamala Harris and is campaigning for her in Pennsylvania.

According to People magazine:

Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush, spent part of her weekend in Pennsylvania campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris with just days to go before the 2024 presidential election….

“Barbara’s Republican father served as president from 2001 to 2009. Her mother, former first lady Laura Bush, 77, broke with the party’s stance in 2010 by saying she supports same-sex marriage and abortion. At the time, Laura said abortion should “remain legal, because I think it’s important for people, for medical reasons and other reasons.”

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Gender, Harris, Kamala

Women of America: Do You Trust Trump to Protect You?

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2024 //
110

Trump had a town hall for Republican women to address women’s issues. He sought to reassure his audience that he would protect them. This is the town hall in Georgia where he claimed that he was “the father of IVF.” No one asked him to define IVF. I wonder if he could.

Jill Filipovic wrote for Slate about Trump’s efforts to calm women voters. He needs their votes.

What, most politicians ask themselves, do women want? American women vote in larger numbers than men. Issues that affect our lives are routinely diminished as “women’s issues,” even as we make up more than half the population. Both parties, but Republicans much more than Democrats, have a male dominance problem. There has never been a female president.

So, what do women want? Last week, Republican presidential contender Donald Trump took a shot at answering that question when he sat down with Fox News host Harris Faulkner and a female-only audience for a town hall event that aired on Wednesday. Trump’s answer to the age-old question? Bizarre ramblings about safety, nonsensical talking points about reproductive rights, and strongman promises to just fix things, democratic processes be damned. What was clear, though, was how Trump and his team approach women: As dependents in need of protection, and as a special interest group that doesn’t particularly interest him outside of the fact that he needs them to win.

If you’ve watched a Trump debate or a Trump rally, very little of what he said on The Faulkner Focus will come as a surprise. His talking points are well-established, if they tend to come out in streams of gibberish and have little relationship to reality. He had the best border; Biden had the worst border. He had the best economy; Biden had the worst economy. This time, he added a few newer ones: He had the best child tax credit, although, he said, it was mostly his daughter’s idea, and Biden turned it into the worst tax credit. (In reality: Joe Biden expanded the child tax credit; Republicans, aided by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, then refused to renew it; and this summer Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have expanded it.) Trump’s Republican Party is also the best on IVF, he said, better than Democrats—and in fact, he, Trump, is the “father of IVF,” an absurd claim he boasted three separate times.

Setting aside how offensive and stomach-roiling it is to hear that phrase out of Trump’s mouth, the claim that Republicans are good on IVF couldn’t be more false. Republicans have opposed Democratic efforts to protect IVF nationally and have introduced bills that could ban it nationwide. But it’s really clear that Trump knows how bad Republicans look on this—and he credited the “fantastically attractive” Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama with teaching him so this year after the Alabama Supreme Court effectively made it illegal in that state.

How he learned what IVF was this year and still became IVF’s father was left a mystery. But this Big Daddy posturing was his central theme.

It was clear from the start that Trump’s team had told him to emphasize safety—that the pro-Trump women in the audience (and they were almost all pro-Trump) wanted to hear about how Trump would protect them. Faulkner kicked off the conversation by complaining about Democratic “prebuttals” to the town hall, playing footage of Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock telling voters to get out and cast their ballots because Trump is a threat to democracy. Trump responded by bragging about his endorsements from the Border Patrol and the Fraternal Order of Police—not exactly organizations with tons of women in their ranks—and continued, “So when you talk about safety …” (Faulkner had not talked about safety). But Trump did want to talk about safety or, to put a finer point on it, to convince suburban Georgia women that they are imperiled by undocumented immigrants and criminals, and that Trump is the only one who can save them.

Trump also played the protector when asked about the child tax credit, which has become far less generous thanks largely to Republicans. Always careful to maintain a macho posture, the former president actually gave someone else credit for once—his daughter Ivanka, who he said begged him to do something to support struggling families. He suggested he didn’t have any great desire to take on the issue, but, well, his daughter demanded it, and Daddy wasn’t going to say no.

The same theme showed up in Trump’s answer to a question about transgender girls playing sports. The solution, Trump said, was simply to ban it. How would he prevent trans girls from playing sports, Faulkner asked? He would just ban it, Trump said. That’s it—he’ll be the president, after all. Just ban it.

The audience cheered.

On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris has rightly been emphasizing the threat Trump poses to democracy (it is actually Democrats, Trump said in this town hall, who are the real threats to democracy). And many voters are certainly persuaded that democracy is worth defending, and that Trump imperils it. But for Trump’s loyalists, his authoritarian tendencies are part of the draw. He won’t mess around with the separation of powers or slow process of democratic lawmaking. He’ll be the president—if he doesn’t like something, he’ll just ban it. Like the women in the Fox audience, his supporters love it. And if women are good to Daddy, maybe he’ll take their problems into consideration, too.

Women are more than half of the population. There is no one thing we all want. Except, I suspect, the right to bodily autonomy when our lives or health are threatened by a situation out of our control. Trump’s pitch to women is that they won’t need autonomy. They can just trust in the man who promises to bend the country in their favor, even if he winds up breaking it.

Categories Elections, Gender, Trump

Florida: “A Man Is Nothing Without His Conscience”

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
4

The DeSantis regime threatened to prosecute television stations that aired ads supporting Amendment 4, the one that repeals the state ban on abortion. The order was blocked by the courts. When the lawyer for the state Department of Health was directed to sign a second letter reiterating the threat, he resigned.

The Miami Herald reported:

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ top deputies directed a Florida Health Department lawyer to threaten Florida television stations with criminal prosecution for running political advertisements that support enshrining abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, according to new court records.

Florida Department of Health General Counsel John Wilson said he was given pre-written letters from one of DeSantis’ lawyers on Oct. 3 and told to send them under his own name, he wrote in a sworn affidavit Monday.

Although he had never participated in any discussions about the letters, Wilson sent them anyway, he wrote, setting off a firestorm that led to a federal judge last week granting a temporary restraining order against the state.

Wilson abruptly quit on Oct. 10, writing in his resignation letter that “A man is nothing without his conscience.” The letter, first reported by the Herald/Times, did not explicitly say he was resigning over the controversy.

But in his affidavit, Wilson said the decision was made to avoid sending out more letters. “I resigned from my position as general counsel in lieu of complying with directives from [DeSantis General Counsel Ryan] Newman and [Deputy General Counsel Jed] Doty to send out further correspondence to media outlets,” he wrote.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article294143314.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Health

Team Trump Is in Talks with Nikki Haley to Create a Joint Event

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2024 //
17

Marc Caputo reported that negotiations are underway behind the scenes to persuade Nikki Haley to moderate a town hall with Trump in the last few days of the campaign. The Trump team knows that he has poor ratings among women, largely because of the reproductive rights issue. Haley might help him with women. He has already held events with MAGA women, including former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in Wisconsin, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Michigan, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn in Michigan, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna in North Carolina, and Fox News personality Harris Faulkner in Georgia. Haley would be a coup for him to reassure women who are angry that Trump’s Supreme Court eliminated their right to control their bodies.

Caputo writes in the Bulwark:

DONALD TRUMP’S ONETIME ambassador and former primary rival, Nikki Haley, is in talks to join him on the campaign trail in an attempt to win over disaffected Republicans, sources familiar with the discussions tell The Bulwark.

The details and dates for the joint appearance haven’t been fully worked out, but the likeliest scenario would put the two together at a town hall toward the end of the month, perhaps involving Fox News personality Sean Hannity, the sources said.

Facing a yawning gender gap, Trump’s campaign has hosted five other town halls moderated by female political figures since August, but none with the stature of Haley. The former UN Ambassador ran a tough primary race against Trump, becoming the last Republican standing against him. Though the primary ended on a contentious note, she spoke on his behalf at the Republican National Convention on July 16.

Since then, however, Haley and Trump have not appeared together. And she hinted that tensions still linger on her new SiriusXM satellite radio show last month.

“I don’t agree with Trump 100 percent of the time,” Haley said. 

“I have not forgotten what he said about me. I’ve not forgotten what he said about my husband or his, you know, deployment time or his military service. I haven’t forgotten about his or his campaign’s tactics from, you know, putting a bird cage outside our hotel room to calling me ‘bird brain,’” Haley said on her show, adding that she’s still for Trump because she thinks he “will make the country better.”

Those comments garnered some attention in Trump’s orbit. One confidant of the ex-president privately joked that talk like that is usually taboo in his circles because “if you’re with him 99 percent of the time, you’re a fucking traitor in Trump’s eyes.”

But Trump prizes winning over servile loyalty, and he recognizes that Haley’s brand as an establishment Republican—one who respectfully disagrees with him on the margins—could help in November, even if he said the opposite during the primary. 

Open the link to finish the post.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Gender, Health, Trump

The New Republic: Vance Lied about the GOP Position on Abortion in the Debate

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2024 //
14

Let’s be clear about one thing: JD Vance lied about every important issue during his debate with Tim Walz. He lied about Obamacare (Trump did not save it, he repeatedly tried to kill it). He lied about Trump’s refusal to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election. He lied about January 6. And he lied about abortion, expressing his sorrow that Amber Thurman died of a botched abortion in Georgia because the state ban made it impossible for her to get the care she needed. I tweeted this yesterday: “JD Vance is sorry that Amber Thurman died but happy that Roe v. Wade was overturned, which led to Georgia’s ban on abortion care, which caused Amber’s death.” So much for contrition.

Melissa Girardi Grant wrote in The New Republic about Vance and Trump’s efforts to confuse voters about their opposition to abortion:

She wrote:

During the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, former President Trump tried to bail his running mate out of an abortion question with a series of half-truths and lies. “EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT,” Trump posted to social media, “BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!).”

This is a nonsensical sentence for many reasons. Among them: No one is saying that Congress would pass a new federal ban and hand it Trump to sign or veto. What Trump might do—what his allies want him to do—is enact a ban by enforcing the 1873 Comstock Act, which can’t be vetoed since it’s already on the books. Trump’s misdirection distracts from his consistent anti-abortion record while in office, what the Republican Party platform states, and the very public plans of his former staffers detailed in Project 2025, which Trump also pretends he has nothing to do with. That is part of the Trump-Vance campaign’s plan on abortion: to do whatever they can not to talk about that plan, or at least to confuse the public about what that plan is.

The questions moderators posed to vice presidential candidates Governor Tim Walz and Senator JD Vance on Tuesday night did little to clear matters up. They were not about abortion or abortion rights; they were questions about whether the candidates were lying about abortion.

The question one moderator asked Walz reinforced anti-abortion misinformation spread by Trump. “After Roe v. Wade was overturned, you signed a bill into law that made Minnesota one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion. Former President Trump said in the last debate that you believe abortion ‘in the ninth month is absolutely fine.’ Yes or no? Is that what you support?” asked Norah O’Donnell of CBS News. “I’ll give you two minutes.”

O’Donnell’s own news organization debunked this same “ninth month abortion” point after the last debate. “Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed during Tuesday night’s presidential debate that Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, supports the ‘execution’ of babies after they are born, repeating earlier false assertions that Democrats support killing babies,” CBS News fact-checker Laura Doan wrote way back on September 11.

Walz answered the question posed to him about Minnesota’s abortion law very, very briefly—“That’s not what the bill says”—before pointing out the simple truth that, via his appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump helped end the federal right to an abortion in this country. “He brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v. Wade, 52 years of personal autonomy.”

Trump typically responds to this kind of argument by talking about “the will of the people,” as he did in his all-caps post. But when voters have been asked directly about abortion through ballot measures, they affirm the right to abortion. Trump is going to have his say as one of these voters: As a Florida resident, he will be able to vote on the Florida ballot measure that would repeal Florida’s post-Dobbs six-week abortion ban. He has said he would vote “no.” The Republican Party’s platform advances the idea that a fetus is a legal person with rights under the Fourteenth Amendment—which, should the courts agree, would effectively make abortion a crime in every state. Failing that, Trump’s former head of Health and Human Services, Roger Severino, argues that a national abortion ban already exists, in his section of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership.” This argument that the Comstock Act of 1873 could be enforced today to ban abortion is legally dubious at best, but it enjoys the support of 145 Republican members of Congress and has already been entertained at the Supreme Court by Justices Thomas and Alito.

The first abortion question moderators posed JD Vance was about whether he and Trump would create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency. “No, Norah, certainly we won’t,” he said, before launching into a lengthy digression about how the Republican Party needs to win back Americans’ trust on “this issue.” But having affirmed the importance of trust, in subsequent questions, he went on to lie spectacularly on two fronts: First, by saying “I never supported a national ban” (in 2022 he said he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and backed Lindsey Graham’s proposal for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks), and later, by making an utterly bizarre claim about Minnesota abortion law. “The Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law,” Vance said to Walz, “it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.”

“The idea of abortion being performed after birth is sometimes used to stigmatize abortion care received later in pregnancy,” as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists write in a fact sheet responding to such misinformation. Talking points like Trump’s also distort perinatal palliative care, ACOG points out, which is given to reduce the discomfort of sick or disabled newborns whose conditions cause them to die shortly after birth. “At no point in the course of delivering a newborn with life-limiting conditions and subsequently providing palliative care does the obstetrician–gynecologist end the life of the newborn receiving palliative care.”

Walz tried to push back again, to say this isn’t what the law said. Vance adopted a know-it-all debate club stance: “What was I wrong about? Governor, please tell me. What was I wrong about?”

In this way, the debate became more about competing claims of what the other person said than about clarifying the candidates’ actual positions. If this sounds tedious to you and impossible to follow, well, you’re not alone. The meta-debate about abortion is boring and exhausting. But you can see why Trump and Vance would prefer to stay there, in the meta-debate. So long as the campaign sows confusion and rewrites reality around a policy position that is wildly unpopular—restricting abortion access—it helps Trump.

Democrats should take every opportunity to argue for what they want and reassert reality, as Walz tried to do. But there’s still a lot further to go: According to a May 2024 Times/Siena poll, around 17 percent of registered voters in swing states said that Biden is more responsible “for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion” than Trump. Twelve percent of Democrats in those states said the same thing. What more proof do Democrats need that they have more and better storytelling to do?

Yes. However, I would say that Democrats need more truth-telling to their voters. Leave the storytelling to JD.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Gender, Georgia, Health, Lies, Vance, J.D.
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