Govt. Tim Walz vociferously defended his record on abortion rights during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.
“You signed a bill that makes [abortion] legal through all nine months [of a pregnancy]. Is that a position you think Democrats should advocate for nationally?” anchor Shannon Bream asked.
“Look, the vice president and I have been clear the restoration of Roe v. Wade is what we're asking for,” Walz said. “This is a woman's right to make her own choice.”
“But that law goes far beyond Roe v. Wade,” Bream interjected, adding, “What you signed, there's not a single limit through nine months of pregnancy. Roe had a quarterly framework that did have limits through pregnancy. The Minnesota law does not have that.”
To be clear, since Bream isn't, Roe protected abortion rights through the first trimester but allowed states to “regulate procedure” — meaning states could restrict or ban abortions — in the second and third trimesters, but it absolutely did not restrict or place limitations on abortions nationwide. Later, in the 1992 case of Casey v. Planned Parenthoodthe court protected abortion rights pre-viability and allowed states to restrict abortion post-viability.
The Minnesota law Walz signed “puts the decision with the woman and her health care providers,” he said. “The situation we have is when you don't have the ability of health care providers to provide that, that's when you end up with a situation like Amanda Zurawski in Texas where they are afraid to do what's necessary,” he added. “This doesn't change anything. It puts the decision back onto the woman, to the physicians.”
“Let's be very clear,” Walz continued. “Donald Trump's asking for a nationwide abortion ban.”
Bream responded that Trump has “said repeatedly that he will not sign an abortion ban.” That's what he has said most recently, including in the presidential debate, but Trump's position on abortion has frequently shifted, as has his running mate's, likely in an attempt to make themselves more palatable to voters. As recently as earlier this year, Trump signaled support for a national 15-week abortion ban. “The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15, and I'm thinking in terms of that, and it'll come out to something that's very reasonable,” he told WABC in March. “But people are really — even hard-liners are agreeing — seems to be 15 weeks, seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.” During the 2016 election, he said there should be “some form of punishment” for women who seek abortions.
Bream then made similar claims to what Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said in the debate. Bream said that Minnesota law “used to require medical personnel to 'preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.'” That is correct. The law now reads that health care providers must “care for the infant who is born alive.”
“Why was it important to you to get that protection out of the law?” Bream asked.
“Minnesota law aligns with every other case of what physicians are required by their ethical responsibilities, and so it changed nothing other than aligning with all care that physicians provide in any circumstance in any medical case,” Walz replied.
But Bream kept going. “But you do acknowledge it takes out the language about preserving the life of an infant who was born alive.”
“Every doctor has an ethical responsibility to provide what they can in each situation. That is the way the law is written now. It's the same for any person who shows up,” Walz said. “And again, this is a distraction from the real issue here, [which] is women are being forced into miscarriages, women being forced to go back home, get sepsis, die like we saw in cases in Texas. Maternal mortality rates have skyrocketed in Texas because of this.”
Walz then reiterated that he and Vice President Kamala Harris plan to restore Roe v. Wade protections if elected.
What Bream did not include in her framing about health care for an infant born alive is the reality that parents often face when their child is born with significant birth defects and is unlikely to survive. “Removing the so-called 'Born Alive Infant Act' from the law does not legalize infanticide as has been alleged,” Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Tina Liebling said last year of the changes to the state's law. “If you give birth pre-term or to an infant that has some kind of devastating defect, instead of that infant being ripped out of your arms because politicians have decided that that is what should happen and there should be significant interventions… it should be between the parents and the doctor. People in these tragic situations deserve that privacy.”
As The 19th's reproductive health reporter Shefali Luthra explained to Minnesota Public Radio, “If you know that your child isn't going to live, maybe you deserve a chance to hold it, to spend some time bonding, to do palliative care rather than focus on medical interventions that aren't going to work.”
But Trump and the Republicans don't want you thinking about those situations when you're voting on abortion restrictions and health care legislation, instead preferring to falsely claim that doctors are somehow killing or neglecting infants who were just born — blatant lies that have been debunked over and over again.
