From the worst inflationary crisis in 40 years to international conflagrations in Israel and Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris trails behind former President Donald Trump in polling on every policy issue except for one, abortion. Naturally, the CBS anchors trying to assist Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) during the vice presidential debate allowed the Democratic running mate to open the section on abortion by falsely accusing Republican running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) of proposing a “registry of pregnancies” and bans on contraception and fertility treatments. The Ohio senator shut down Walz’s smears. Even better, he and Trump concurrently claimed the moderate mantle on the abortion issue, illustrating the extreme position Walz clung to with little pushback from the moderators.
“One of the things that changed [in my abortion position] is in the state of Ohio, we had a referendum in 2023 and the people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position,” said Vance of his former opposition to a state referendum that legalized abortion through 21 weeks of pregnancy. “And I think that what I learned from that is that we’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust. So many young women would love to have families, so many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships, and we have got to earn people’s trust back, and that’s why Donald Trump and I are committed to pursuing pro-family policies, making child care more accessible, making fertility treatments more accessible, because we’ve got to do a better job at that, and that’s what real leadership is a response.”
On Twitter, Trump concurrently reiterated his belief, previously broadcast by Vance, that all abortion restrictions and codifications must be left to the states, confirming that while he personally opposes the “radical position of late term abortion” — which Walz indeed legalized in Minnesota as governor, protecting abortions of fully viable fetuses through nine months of gestation — he “would, in fact, veto” any bill to restrict abortion on a federal level. While Vance was unrepentant in his staunch opposition to Harris’s past persecution of pro-life Christian employers and healthcare professionals and his support for life-saving care for the unborn, Vance voiced unusual empathy while defending the record that is dramatically more in line with the median American opinion than that of Walz and his boss.
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Both as senator and vice president, Harris endorsed legislation that would federally codify legal abortion up until the point of birth. Yet barely 1-in-5 voters supports protecting abortion access in the third trimester, with 70% saying late-term abortion should be illegal. By contrast, Trump has criticized Florida’s six-week ban, which is opposed by 59% of voters polled by Gallup, but he also announced his opposition to the Sunshine State’s Amendment 4, which would legalize those wildly unpopular late-term abortions. Trump, and by extension, Vance, have fallen in line with the median public opinion that Democrats once claimed to endorse: that abortion, far from being an affirmative good, should be safe, term-limited, and rare when legalized at the state level.
Doctrinaire social conservatives will find plenty at fault with the stated position of Trump and Vance, but the Republican ticket has found a middle ground with the party’s base and the country’s moderates. After two subsequent debates of doubling down on the maximalist pro-abortion position, can Democrats really say the same?