Opinion

How 10 minutes on abortion changed the race between Trump and Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance, by contrast, was a reassurance that she is fully capable of assuming the presidency. She summoned her not-so-inner prosecutor to lay out the devastating case against Trump, using the testimony of his former aides and his own words to prove her point beyond a reasonable doubt. She had command of the policy. Yes, she evaded answering some direct questions, including on her shifting positions, and, yes, the otherwise capable moderators should have pressed her harder, but she came off as far more prepared to be president — and far more human.

If there was one subject that offered a microcosm of the difference between the two, it was abortion, which consumed — appropriately so — a full 10 minutes. Trump showed himself to be ignorant, dishonest and unprincipled. Harris demonstrated not only her grasp of the issue but also her passion for women’s ability to control their reproductive choices and her understanding of why that matters so deeply.

Ignorance first: Leave aside the small point that Trump couldn’t even get the vote count correct, twice citing “the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices” who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. (There were five votes to do so.)

Once again, Trump made the astonishing claim that “every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.” This is not in the exurbs of true. The reasoning in Roe was criticized by any number of legal scholars, including liberals, and perhaps Trump seized on that thread and embellished it. But questioning the jurisprudence of Roe is far different from saying the right to abortion does not deserve constitutional protection and that the rights of individual women should be left to the vagaries of where they happen to live. Everyone did not want to see that. In fact — not that facts matter to Trump — two-thirds of the country opposes having Roe overturned.

Dishonest — where to start? Perhaps with Trump’s explanation of his about-face on whether he would vote for the Florida referendum to overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban. (He was for the referendum, saying six weeks was “too short,” before he was against it.)

Trump explained: “Well, the reason I’m doing that vote is because … they have abortion in the ninth month. They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, who’s doing an excellent job, but the governor before. He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.”

Uh, no. Leave aside, again, the small point that Trump was referring to former Virginia governor Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon. (He correctly identified Northam later in the debate.) For the record, here is what Northam said in 2019, about late-term abortions. “There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So, in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. I can tell you the infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Northam’s is the go-to comment seized on — and distorted — by those who claim, as Trump does, that Democrats are “radical” proponents of late-term or, somehow, “post-birth abortions.” Thus, Trump went on to assert that Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz “says 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. Hence the vote.”

This is flatly false. As moderator Linsey Davis noted, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” More than that, it is false in a way that is not only willful but cruel toward women and families who face agonizing choices about how to deal with severe health risks to the mother, severe fetal deformities and terribly premature births. Trump and Republican want to hijack these thankfully rare personal tragedies as an excuse for preventing almost all abortions.

Which brings us to unprincipled. Trump’s abortion position — it has long been clear — is entirely dictated by political expediency. This is a man who told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in 2016 that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who obtain abortions, only to swiftly reverse himself after backlash from antiabortion groups. Now, in his leave-it-to-states incarnation, Trump claims he opposes a national abortion ban.

But pressed by Davis about whether he would veto such a measure, Trump twice avoided answering — despite the fact that his running mate had asserted Trump would. “I don’t mind if he has a certain view but I think he was speaking for me but I really didn’t,” Trump said of vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.

And then he veered into Trumpian confusion, seeming to conflate the slim prospects for passage of an abortion ban with the chances of Democrats approving federal protection for abortion rights. “Look, we don’t have to discuss it because she’d never be able to get it just like she couldn’t get student loans,” he said. Um, what?

What’s really going on beneath this muddle? Trump is taking heat from antiabortion activists who are furious about his desperate campaign contortions to soften his stance on the issue. Vowing to veto a ban would further inflame them, so Trump, unprincipled as ever, wants to split the difference, even if that position makes no logical sense. As Vance said, “I mean, if you’re not supporting it, as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it.”

As much as Trump’s debate remarks on abortion demonstrated his failings, Harris’s discussion, for the most part, highlighted her strengths on this issue, both substantive and emotional.

Here’s why I say “for the most part.” Harris dodged when asked whether she would support any restriction on abortion rights, offering only, “I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade.” Trump smartly pressed her on that point, Harris parried with his own waffling about vetoing a national ban, and the moderators failed to follow up. That’s too bad, because there is a reasonable answer here that voters are entitled to here.

But Harris shone — demonstrating empathy and passion — when she talked about the human stakes involved. “Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest,” Harris said. “Understand what that means. A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”

What a smart framing, designed to attract, not repel, those who have moral qualms about abortion.

And that wasn’t all. “You want to talk about this is what people wanted?” Harris said, looking at Trump. “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. A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don’t want that.”

This is the case that President Joe Biden couldn’t make, not with such clarity and force. This is the reality for women that Trump will never comprehend. This is the choice that voters face, and those 10 minutes should have made the correct answer clear.