Minnesota Governor and Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz faced a bit of real-time fact checking this week from “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream when the two discussed the PRO Act, the pro-abortion law he signed into effect in Minnesota in 2023, and the impact of pro-life laws.
The Minnesota abortion law states, “Every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health, including the fundamental right to use or refuse reproductive health care,” and “Every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to continue the pregnancy and give birth, or obtain an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise this fundamental right.”
There are no gestational restrictions or restrictions of any kind in the law.
‘Restoration of Roe is all we want’
Bream told Walz, “I want to clarify what the law is there in Minnesota.” She then quoted from abortionfinder.org, which states, “Abortion is legal throughout pregnancy in Minnesota — there is no ban or limit on abortion in Minnesota based on how far along in pregnancy you are.”
Bream continued, “You signed a bill that makes it legal through all nine months. Is that a position you think Democrats should advocate for nationally?”
Tim Walz cracks under the most basic pushback to his radical abortion extremism — and gets called out for his disgusting lies: “To be clear, the Minnesota law is FAR beyond Roe v. Wade.” pic.twitter.com/o88IXhyOxU
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 6, 2024
This is what Democrats have been advocating for, however, Walz replied, “Look, the Vice President and I have been clear the restoration of Roe v. Wade is what we’re asking for. This is a woman’s right to make her own choice.”
Bream responded, “But that law goes far beyond Roe v. Wade.”
Walz claimed, “The law is very clear. The law does not change that.”
Bream pushed back, “What you signed, there’s not a single limit through nine months of pregnancy. Roe had a trimester framework that did have limits through the pregnancy. The Minnesota law does not have that.”
While it’s true that Roe had a “trimester framework,” between Roe and its sister case, Doe v. Bolton, the health exceptions that allowed abortion after “viability” created a loophole in which women could have obtained abortions for virtually any reason through all 40 weeks. This was because “health” as defined by Doe included even mental, financial, and familial health. So while states could restrict abortion after viability, the “health” loophole always existed. Read more on that here.
Minnesota law doesn’t even include that giant loophole, proving that despite claims of wanting to “restore Roe,” pro-abortion politicians want abortion plainly legal — at any time, for any reason.
Bream also pointed out that the law actually removed the state’s previous requirements regarding babies accidentally born alive during abortions — something Roe and Doe never even touched on:
WATCH: Tim Walz is confronted with the facts about his radical abortion law, which he LIED about in the debate.
The law does, in fact, remove requirements for doctors to preserve the life of babies that survive botched abortions — and removes reporting requirements.
He still… pic.twitter.com/2n34zYLpQD
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 6, 2024
‘Amber Thurman died because of Georgia law’
Walz claimed during the interview, “The situation we have is when you don’t have the ability of health care providers to provide that, that’s where you end up with a situation like Amanda Zurawski in Texas, where they are afraid to do what’s necessary.” He added, still defending Minnesota law, “This doesn’t change anything. It puts the decision back onto the woman, to the physicians…”
He added, “States like Georgia force women to cross the border, and then we have a death of Amber Thurman…”
“But to be clear,” replied Bream, “the Minnesota law goes far beyond Roe v. Wade — and about the Amber Thurman case in Georgia, her family has — and it’s tragic, she is a young mother who left behind a young son — but what her family has said it was a complication from an abortion pill that she received, and she didn’t get proper care when she went to a Georgia hospital which had multiple opportunities to intervene there. Her own attorney, the family’s attorney, says it wasn’t the Georgia law, it was the hospital’s — what he claims is — malpractice.”
There is nothing in the Texas law that prevented Zurawski from receiving the care she needed for insufficient cervix and preterm premature rupture of membranes. Induced abortion, the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child, is not medically necessary and is not the standard of care to treat that condition. If doctors are indeed “afraid” to act, that would indicate that there is a failure to understand what induced abortion is. Read more on Zurawski’s story here.
As for Thurman’s tragic death, the abortion industry cared so little for Thurman that a facility in North Carolina gave her the abortion pill and sent her home, despite the potential risks. When the abortion pill failed to complete the abortion, Thurman sought care at a hospital where doctors diagnosed sepsis but failed to provide her with the immediate treatment she needed. She died as a result of the hospital’s failures, not the state law. Read more here.
Even her family’s attorney, as Bream pointed out, has said this.
“Even under Georgia law, the doctors had a duty to act to save Amber,” said attorney Ben Crump. “She had taken the abortion pills and there were tissues left. There was no viable fetus or anything that would have prevented them from saving her life while she suffered. You have a duty to stabilize her and then give her the option to go to another hospital facility. But you cannot let her suffer and die on your hospital bed when the death is preventable.”
‘Put the decision back onto women’
Furthermore, Walz said the Minnesota law “puts the decision back onto women…” But sadly, when abortion is unrestricted, women are likely to receive even less support to carry their children to term.
Studies show that 64% of women who have undergone abortions did so, not because they wanted to, but due to pressure from parents, boyfriends, employers, and friends, as well as the pressure they faced from their financial situations. Additional research published by the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons reported that 73.8% of women with a history of abortion experienced “at least subtle forms of pressure” to abort.
Ultimately, abortion advocates have sought far more than a mere “restoration of Roe,” repeatedly pushing legislation such as the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would eliminate conscience protections for health care professionals, and according to a previous report from Live Action News, “aims to allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy… would also wipe out any state-level protections for preborn children that have been enacted since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022, and prohibit states from passing any additional laws to protect preborn children prior to so-called ‘viability.'”
