Trump highlights abortion comments from Democrat to show who’s ‘radical’ on the issue

During Tuesday's debate, former President Trump, arguing with moderator Lindsey Davis, sought to compare his own and other Republican pro-life views with those of Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats.

Davis asked, “Why? [Americans] On the abortion issue, I don't “trust” him, even though he has changed his views on some aspects from time to time.

Trump responded by saying Democrats were “extreme” on the issue and that Republicans were trying to “take the issue back to the states” by supporting overturning Roe v. Wade.

President Trump argued that comments by former Virginia Gov. Ralph S. Northam seemed to prove that it is Democrats, not Republicans, who hold extreme views on the issue.

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Trump, appearing to mistakenly refer to Northam as a former West Virginia governor, Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin, said the opposition wants to allow abortions up to the ninth month of pregnancy and even after birth.

“Look [Northam]”Not the current governor, who's doing a great job, but the governor before him, said, 'When the baby is born, we're going to decide what to do with the baby,' and that means executing the baby,” Trump said.

In 2019, Northam was interviewed by Washington, D.C. radio station WTOP and asked about a bill by Rep. Cathy Tran (D-Springfield) that would have loosened abortion restrictions in Virginia.

Northam was asked to explain comments Tran made during a committee hearing about whether childbearing women should be allowed to have access to abortions.

“That's why such a decision should be made by the health care provider, the doctor and the mother and father involved. If we're talking about a late-term abortion, this is of course done with the consent of the mother and the consent of the doctor – and there's more than one doctor, by the way – and it's done in cases where there may be a severe deformity,” he said.

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Northam, who is also a pediatrician in Onancock, Virginia, said that if a mother goes into labor, the baby “will [and] I had a comfortable stay.”

“If the mother and family wish, the infant will be resuscitated and a discussion will then take place between the doctor and the mother.”

During the debate, Trump said Northam's comments showed Democrats were truly “radical” on the issue, while Republicans had tried to turn the issue back to the states, allowing residents to vote on how lenient or strict their abortion policies should be.

Trump said most Republicans support exceptions to the abortion ban for the mother's life and in cases of rape and incest.

He noted that Republican success in putting abortion back into state legislatures has actually led some Republican-leaning states to pass previously permissive abortion policies, citing referendums in Ohio and Kansas as examples.

“vote [in Ohio] He was somewhat liberal,” Trump said.

But Davis interrupted Trump after he finished responding, saying: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a newborn baby.”

Delano Squires, a religion fellow at the Heritage Foundation, shared a video of Tran and Northam discussing late-term abortion policy, sarcastically captioning it, “No one supports abortion in the 9th month of pregnancy.”

Former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam gestures as he answers questions during a press conference inside the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond, Virginia, on April 20, 2020, amid the blackface photo scandal. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via The Associated Press | The Associated Press)

“How extreme they are,” tweeted conservative commentator Rob Smith.

Dozens of other people at X posted the same video of Northam speaking to WTOP, either refuting Davis' rebuttals or trying to substantiate Trump's claims.