Jessica Valenti: How Kamala Harris Can Hit Back on Trump's Abortion Lies [View all]

https://jessica.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-trump-abortion-execution-lie

*snip*

After all, Americans support abortion rights because they oppose government interference in pregnancy, but also because they’re horrified by the cruelty of abortion bans. Harris should remind voters that when Trump talks about ‘executions,’ he is talking about real people who have been through real traumas. She needs to make him eat his words.

Most people don’t know, for example, that conservative claims about ‘post-birth’ abortions didn’t come out of nowhere. They originated from an interview with former Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who answered a question about a (highly insulting) hypothetical scenario in which a woman in labor wants an abortion. Northam replied that third trimester abortions are largely done in cases of severe fetal abnormalities or when a fetus is nonviable. He said, “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.”

Northam was referring to the very real decision some parents have to make about whether or not to decline extreme life-saving measures for fatally-ill newborns. When babies have lethal conditions or are born too early to survive, many parents would understandably prefer to spend those last precious moments with their children peacefully—without doctors performing medically invasive, painful, and ultimately futile procedures.

It’s not uncommon for NICU nurses to help parents set up in a private room, maybe with a chair and blanket, so they can say goodbye to their baby without wires, breathing tubes or beeping machines. In these final minutes, families want to give their children peace and dignity.

That’s what Trump means by ‘post-birth’ abortions. Those are the parents he is calling executioners. Americans should know that.

*snip*