In the debate between Vice Presidential candidates on October 1 hosted by CBS, VP candidates Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz touched on key topics leading into the election in November — including abortion. Surprisingly, comments from Walz regarding pregnancy and Project 2025 even managed to earn a fact check from an unlikely source.
We fact-checked six of the claims that were made.
Walz Claim: We simply ‘restored Roe v. Wade’ in Minnesota.
The abortion portion of the debate began with moderator Norah O’Donnell asking Walz about a law he signed as governor of Minnesota that made it “one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion.” She said that former President Donald Trump has remarked that Walz supports abortion “in the ninth month.” O’Donnell asked Walz if this is what he supports.
“This is not what the bill says,” argued Walz — without stating what the bill does say. He mentioned Amanda Zurawski, who suffered premature rupture of membranes in Texas and whose doctors failed to properly treat her. See more on that story in a thorough analysis/fact check from Live Action News. Walz also mentioned other cases such as rape, as apparent justification for third-trimester abortion.
“In Minnesota,” he said, “what we did was restore Roe versus Wade. We made sure that we put women in charge of their healthcare.” He also referred to abortion as “basic human rights.”
Truth: In February 2023, Walz signed into law a bill that made abortion legal in Minnesota throughout pregnancy. Known as the PRO Act, it established a “fundamental right to reproductive health,” and states, “Every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to … obtain an abortion…” It also states that the “government may not regulate an individual’s ability to freely exercise the fundamental rights set forth in this section in a manner that is more restrictive than that set forth in this section.”
There is no mention of any limit or restriction on abortion in the PRO Act — and according to the Associated Press, pro-abortion state legislators voted down all proposed amendments including one that would have explicitly protected preborn children from abortion in the third trimester unless the mother’s life was at risk.
The PRO Act signed by Walz is actually more overt in its support for unlimited abortion than Roe v. Wade and its sister case Doe v. Bolton were. Those Supreme Court decisions forced states to allow induced abortion through the first trimester for any reason (they couldn’t restrict it at all), and then allowed states to protect preborn children at so-called “viability” — though legal language loopholes technically allowed abortion through birth for broad reasons of “health,” including mental or familial health.
Walz Claim: ‘Maternal mortality skyrocketed in Texas.’
Walz went on to claim, “We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world,” since Texas passed its pro-life law, SB 1. This is inaccurate.
Truth: In September, the Gender Equity Policy Institute announced that the maternal mortality rate in Texas increased by a whopping 56 percent between 2019 and 2022. But, there are two problems with this. As explained by Dr. Michael New, “First, the Gender Equity Policy Institute has not released its full report and has only released a very limited amount of data. Additionally, the Gender Equity Policy Institute has no previous background either collecting or analyzing maternal-mortality data from Texas or elsewhere.”
When looking at the data at face value, said New, the “report indicates that the maternal-mortality rate in Texas actually declined by 35 percent between 2021 and 2022.”
He continued, “Furthermore, any reported increase between 2019 and 2021 could have been due to Covid-19 or other factors.”
This final point was also alluded to by Monica Snyder of Secular Pro-Life in a recent article, which states:
The Texas heartbeat law went into effect in September of 2021. So they’re claiming maternal deaths skyrocketed after September 2021. Right?
Then they write an article comparing Texas maternal deaths in 2022 to those in 2019.
Can you think of anything that may have affected maternal mortality happening between 2019 and 2022?
Snyder added:
According to the GEPI analysis, maternal mortality in Texas increased (red arrows) from 2019 to 2020 to 2021. For those of you who recall how time works, this is nearly all before the Texas heartbeat law went into effect in September 2021. What happened after the abortion ban? Texas maternal mortality substantially decreased (green arrows).
Even if we assume that there are no methodological issues with the GEPI analysis, it demonstrates precisely the opposite of what NBC’s descriptions and headline suggest. Their headline should more accurately say “A dramatic decrease in maternal deaths after Texas abortion ban.”
Walz Claim: “Their Project 2025 will have a registry of pregnancies.”
In one response to O’Donnell, Walz claimed, “Their Project 2025 will have a registry of pregnancies.”
Truth: This claim has been fact-checked several times, including by CNN and FactCheck.org.
CNN explained, “Walz’s claim is false. Project 2025 does not propose to make people register with any federal agency when they get pregnant. And there is no indication that a Trump-Vance administration is trying to create a new government entity to monitor pregnancies.”
Project 2025 is a blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation, not Trump or Vance. The blueprint proposes that the federal government begin gathering detailed anonymous data on abortions and miscarriages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been collecting anonymous “abortion surveillance” data voluntarily from some states for years (this reporting isn’t required by federal law) and all states currently submit some anonymous miscarriage data (which is required under federal law), including Walz’s state of Minnesota.
As CNN explained, “… Minnesota posts anonymous abortion and miscarriage data on the state health department’s website every year.” Project 2025 suggests that all states begin to do this.
Vance Claim: ‘We have a diverse country. Let the states decide.’
Senator Vance was then given the opportunity to respond to Walz’s comments. He said, “… Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country, and it is diverse. California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia. Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona, and the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions…”
Truth: It makes little sense morally or ethically for democratic societies to allow a majority of voters to decide which human beings will be allowed to have human rights and who won’t. Every human being, from the moment of fertilization, is fully a member of the human species, which means that human rights must apply equally to that human being — and the first right is life, the right from which stem all other rights. As Live Action president and founder Lila Rose previously explained:
It is not right for democratic societies to vote on the fundamental rights of unpopular minorities. There is no more unpopular minority today than preborn Americans.
Abortion is not about the “will of the people,” it’s about respecting the human right that we are endowed with by our creator. Our rights come from God, not the government. Those rights do not change because of the circumstances of our conception.
Atrocities against human beings — such as the direct and intentional killing of preborn humans by induced abortion — should not be regulated by a popular vote to allow for a certain amount of atrocity.
It is illogical to justly protect preborn human beings in Texas while unjustly stripping them of all protections in California. Human atrocities should be outlawed, and abortion qualifies as a human atrocity. More people must learn the truth about abortion:
Walz Claim: ‘Amber Thurman died because of a pro-life law.’
When asked to respond to Vance, Walz attacked the idea that diverse states can make their own laws (on a wholly different basis than argued above), but he erroneously blamed a pro-life law in Georgia for a woman’s tragic death. He also claimed that women are being denied miscarriage care and other pregnancy care because of pro-life laws. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has made the same claims.
“There is a young woman named Amber Thurman. She happened to be in Georgia, a restricted state,” said Walz. “Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try to get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth. The fact of the matter is, how can we, as a nation, say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography? There is a very real chance had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today.”
Truth: Amber Thurman, who was pregnant with twins, did not die from a lack of abortion access, and she certainly didn’t die in the journey back and forth from state to state. Thurman obtained the abortion pill in North Carolina, and the abortion pill failed to render a complete abortion. Due to this, she developed sepsis, putting her life at risk. When she went to a poorly-reviewed Georgia hospital for care, doctors administered antibiotics, but delayed giving her the D&C she needed to remove the body parts and pregnancy tissue that were left in her uterus — not because of the state’s pro-life law, but because they failed to act quickly, delaying the D&C until the morning. She died during a surgery — but the same could have happened if she lived in a pro-abortion state like Minnesota. Read more on that here.
In addition, women promoted by media who claim to have been denied miscarriage care or emergency pregnancy treatment were actually denied standard care, which does not include induced abortion. Read more on that, and why doctors may be guilty of medical neglect, here.
While Walz is right that geography should not determine a person’s rights, there is no legitimate right to intentionally kill an innocent human being, inside or outside of the uterus. To say there is a right to kill an innocent human because of their location inside a mother’s uterus is discrimination and it grants that woman the right to homicide — to treat that human being as property of which she may dispose.
Walz Claim: ‘It’s not true that Minnesota fails to protect abortion survivors.’
Vance asked Walz about the pro-abortion bill he signed into law — the PRO Act. He said, “As I read the Minnesota law you signed into law, the statute you signed into law, it says that a doctor that presides over an abortion where the baby survived, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched, late-term abortion. That is fundamentally barbaric.”
Walz replied, “That is not true.”
Truth: A Minnesota law dating back to 1976 stated, “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law. All reasonable measure consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the child.”
The legislation Walz signed removed the word “preserve” and replaced it with “to care for the infant who is born alive.” It now states, “All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice… shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to care for the infant who is born alive.” Language matters, and that subtle change could mean that any child — regardless of whether that child was ever diagnosed with a life-limiting condition — could be denied attempted life-saving care, replaced with mere “comfort care” until he or she dies.
Paul Stark, communications director with the pro-life group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, told the National Catholic Register, “The concern is that the law no longer requires that lifesaving measures be taken. It only requires ‘care.’ So the law as it’s now written could allow a baby to be left to die, even a baby who could be saved with appropriate lifesaving measures.”
Walz concluded that everyone should “mind your own business” on abortion while both candidates argued that better public policy should be created to support families. While this could be true in certain states, its important to note that intentionally killing preborn children because of a lack of pro-family policies is unacceptable. Arguing to keep intentional killing legal until those pro-family policies are improved or enacted is a moral travesty.
Intentionally killing preborn children is immoral and unethical, regardless of other public policies (or lack thereof) regarding children and families.
