This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 14 episode of “Velshi.”
Before Donald Trump took office, he promised to deliver a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade — and that’s exactly what he did. Now he’s running for president against the dystopian backdrop of forced birth and denial of care he helped create.
The difficulty of running with that record is evident in the increasing desperation of the lies he tells about abortion and women’s health care. By now, you have probably heard Trump and his acolytes talk about what they’re calling “post-birth abortion.” They claim that Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats want to allow, as Trump puts it, the execution of babies.
This lie, which sounds so insane and fringe that it’s hard to imagine anyone could believe it, was repeated by Trump at last week’s debate:
“Under Roe v. Wade, you could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month, and probably after birth. … The governor of Virginia said, ‘We put the baby aside, and then we determine what we want to do with the baby. … In other words, we’ll execute the baby.’”
What Trump described there is murder, not abortion. The post-birth abortion lie is a deliberate attempt to equate actual abortion — which is health care — to murder, as a means to stigmatize women who need abortions and doctors who provide them.
The post-birth abortion lie is a deliberate attempt to equate actual abortion — which is health care — to murder.
But because you might encounter someone in your own life who believes this dangerous lie, let’s get into the details. Though he did not say his name, Trump was referencing Ralph Northam, the former Democratic governor of Virginia. In 2019, then-Gov. Northam did a radio interview in which he was asked a question about proposed legislation that would have loosened restrictions on late-term abortions. Northam gave a long and somewhat circuitous answer that touched on the tragic circumstances surrounding the very rare cases of late-term abortions:
“When we talk about third-trimester abortions, that decision is made with the mother and with the consent of the physician, more than one physician. And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s nonviable.”
Then, in the same answer, Northam also talked about what would happen if a baby was born with a fatal diagnosis:
“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 that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
As Northam’s office explained at the time, he was speaking of two different circumstances, one in which a catastrophic diagnosis or circumstance would cause a patient to need a late-term abortion — which is extremely rare and done, as Northam notes, only with approval from more than one physician.
The other hypothetical case he addressed was if a patient goes into labor and delivers a baby with a fatal diagnosis. In that case, Northam explained the heartbreaking circumstances such families would face, including the very difficult decisions around keeping their baby comfortable in their final moments or taking extraordinary measures to prolong their life.
The anti-abortion movement took the interview, twisted it and ran — using it to claim that Democrats were promoting abortion after birth, aka the murder of newborns, and now, five years later, the same lie is cropping up on the Republican campaign trail.
But let’s look at the facts: A full-term pregnancy lasts between 39 and 40 weeks. By definition, a late-term or late-in-pregnancy abortion occurs at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy, and they are extremely rare. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, fewer than 1% of all abortions occurred at or after 21 weeks, 80.8% occurred at or before 9 weeks of pregnancy, and just 5.7% occurred between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, which is during the second trimester. Zero abortions are happening after birth.
It sounds bizarre to even have to say that, but in fact we have been building to this moment for a long time. The anti-abortion movement has been painting women who have abortions and physicians who perform them as murderers for decades.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a “common harassment tactic was to find and publicize personal information about doctors in the form of ‘Wanted’ posters. Other times, they would send letters to a doctor’s neighbors, telling them, ‘There is a killer in your neighborhood.’”
For the last four decades, anti-abortion activists have been performing what they call “rescues.” This has involved everything from blocking entrances to abortion clinics and medical centers to harassing patients, doctors and workers, and even invading the clinics. It has often involved carrying signs and calling patients and staff who enter clinics murderers.
The anti-abortion movement has been painting women who have abortions and physicians who perform them as murderers for decades.
The 1980s saw a huge wave of clinic bombings. In 1984, attackers set fire or bombed 29 clinics across the country. According to the National Abortion Federation, since 1977, there have been 42 bombings and 200 cases of arson at clinics across the U.S. And, yes, over the years the anti-abortion movement did cross the threshold into straight-up murder. At least 11 people have been killed by the militant wing of the anti-abortion movement since 1977, according to the group.
Two of the most well-known cases are the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Dr. David Gunn. In the ’90s and early 2000s, Tiller was a frequent target of violence because he was one of a few physicians at the time who were performing late-in-pregnancy abortions. His clinic was bombed in 1986. In 1993, he was shot but survived. In 2009, a man named Scott Roeder walked into Tiller’s church, during service, where Tiller was serving as an usher and shot him in the head, killing him. Roeder said he did it to protect babies from being murdered.
The first known abortion provider to be assassinated was Dr. David Gunn in 1993. The gunman was a member of the anti-abortion group Rescue America. He shot Gunn in the back three times as he entered his clinic in Pensacola, Florida. In response, Rescue America released a statement saying while Gunn’s murder was “unfortunate, the fact is that a number of mothers would have been put at risk today and over a dozen babies would have died at his hands.”
For decades, the anti-abortion movement has been inviting the violence of extremists among their ranks by equating abortion to murder. The rhetoric that Trump and others on the right are now spewing fits seamlessly into this tired, yet dangerous, strategy.
The post-birth abortion lie was designed to justify the brutal regime of forced birth under which millions of American women are now suffering. It’s being used as a lazy but dangerous strategy to turn our attention away from the tragedies that have sprung up in the wake of the end of Roe: the rush of stories of women being denied care, left to bleed and suffer, forced to flee their states and saddled with wholly preventable life-altering medical conditions. Tragedies all because of the anti-abortion crackdown ushered in by Trump.
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