At his rally in El Paso, TX Monday night, President Donald Trump paraphrased what Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA) said about third-trimester abortion.
Here’s what Trump said Monday night:
The governor stated that he would even allow a newborn baby to come out into the world, and wrap the baby, and make the baby comfortable, and then talk to the mother and talk to the father and then execute the baby. Execute the baby!
Here’s what Northam said when asked if he supported proposed legislation that would allegedly allow a woman in labor to receive an abortion, as suggested by one Democrat legislator:
This is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved. When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So, in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.
Left-wing media outlets like Vox suggested Trump was misleading about Northam’s comments, and kept referring to Northam’s remarks as “confusing” or “unclear.”
Northam’s statement is not unclear. Northam said the “infant” (read: not fetus) would be delivered, kept comfortable, and resuscitated only if the mother and family wanted it to be, meaning if the family wanted, they could just let the baby die. Northam then said that even if the baby was resuscitated, a “discussion” would then take place.
No, Northam did not say “execute the baby,” as Trump did, but he left the door wide open for that possibility. Also, as Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro wrote, Northam’s comments also endorsed “eugenic murder,” as he suggested third-term abortions were done, in some cases, where the baby had “severe deformities.”
Northam and his spokespeople, while claiming he never endorsed infanticide, failed to actually suggest that.
“The governor’s comments focused on the tragic and extremely rare case in which a woman with a nonviable pregnancy or severe fetal abnormalities went into labor,” the spokesperson said.
So, again, the woman would go into labor and then the family would decide whether to let the baby live or die.
ThinkProgress, Splinter, and even the typically neutral Mediaite, all claimed Trump was wrong.
Vox noted that infanticide is still a crime in Virginia, but the line between, say, suffocating a baby with a pillow and allowing a deformed baby to die if the mother didn’t want it seems to have been blurred. Obviously, one’s interpretation of what Northam said will depend on which side of the abortion debate they land on, but claiming Trump was completely wrong in what he said is itself not accurate.
