(LifeSiteNews) –– Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz squared off Tuesday evening for this year’s first and only vice presidential nominee debate, during which Vance called out Walz for signing a law that permits infanticide in his home state, while staking out defensive ground on his and running mate Donald Trump’s own position.
At one point, Walz claimed the Trump-Vance ticket, though the conservative Project 2025 policy plan Trump has long since disavowed, would implement a federal “registry of pregnancies,” something that appears nowhere in Project 2025.
Vance denied the claim, but instead of slamming Walz for fabricating it quickly struck a more conciliatory tone.
“I grew up in a working class family in a neighborhood where I knew a lot of young women who had unplanned pregnancies, and decided to terminate those pregnancies because they feel like they didn’t have any other options,” he said. “One of them is actually very dear to me. And I know she’s watching tonight, and I love you, and she told me something a couple years ago that she felt like if she hadn’t had her abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”
In line with the new GOP platform, which has abandoned many of its pro-life and pro-family objectives, Vance failed to reiterate the objective immorality of abortion in all circumstances, instead going on to say that as a Republican who “wants to protect innocent life,” the takeaway of his story was that the GOP has “got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us. And I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do. I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word,” meaning support for fertility treatments as well as unspecified policies to make childcare and housing more affordable, while allowing states to reach different conclusions on abortion policy.
Vance’s desire to make the Republican Party under his and Trump’s leadership “pro-family” is at odds with the duo’s own stated positions in favor of abortion pills, embryo-destroying in-vitro fertilization treatments and the promise to veto any nationwide abortion ban if such a bill is passed by Congress.
When it was his turn again, Walz repeated the false claim that pro-life laws killed a Georgia woman named Amber Thurman, stressing that Democrats “know what the implications are to not be that women having miscarriages, women not getting the care, physicians feeling like they may be prosecuted for providing that care,” and repeating his “mind your own business” slogan.
Tim Walz repeates the Amber Thurman lie. She died from abortion medication complications and medical negligence. Her d*ath had nothing to do with any kind of abortions laws. pic.twitter.com/CLdzRsc126
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 2, 2024
Vance went on to challenge Walz about the pro-abortion laws he signed, which Vance said meant a doctor “is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion […] That is fundamentally barbaric. Do you want to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions against their will? Because Kamala Harris has supported suing Catholic nuns to violate their freedom of conscience.”
Vance accurately points out that Tim Walz repealed Minnesota’s requirement that measures be taken to preserve the “life and health” of a baby who survives an abortion, replacing it with a nebulous requirement for “care.”
Vance: “That is fundamentally barbaric.” pic.twitter.com/KukWZS2lRL
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 2, 2024
Walz insisted he did nothing more than “restore Roe v. Wade,” and that claims about his actions’ extremism had been previously debunked by fact-checks, the details of which he did not elaborate on.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, in January 2023 Walz signed the so-called Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, which guarantees a “fundamental right” to effectively unlimited abortion. And as detailed by The Dispatch’s Alex Dumas in August, in may of that year Walz signed an omnibus bill that repealed most of Minnesota’s born-alive protections, including reporting requirements.
That omnibus left intact language that “[a]ll reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the child,” but rewrote the requirement to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant” into merely “car[ing] for the infant who is born alive.”
“Minnesota Department of Health documents show that eight infants were born alive during abortion procedures between 2019 and 2022,” Dumas notes.
The debate drew a mixed reaction from pro-life viewers, with many simultaneously condemning Walz’s radicalism and lamenting the GOP ticket’s moderate turn under Trump.
Why is JD backing down on life? Because Trump is demanding that he do it. It makes him look dishonest and it is dishonest. JD, you’ve been widely admired for your courage and vision. You know abortion is evil, that it is indefensible. Stand up for the lives of children.
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) October 2, 2024
Listen to the Minnesota legislator who authored the bill Walz signed repealing protection for infants born from a botched abortion – Rep. Tina Liebling.
The reality and intent of what Minnesota Democrats did is a matter of record.
Tim Walz is lying about what he signed. pic.twitter.com/klcZIGRoYW
— Walter Hudson (@WalterHudson) October 2, 2024
Trump opposes further federal action on abortion and supports letting abortion pills be distributed by mail, and has caused consternation among current and former pro-life supporters by staking out those positions over the past several months, along with his work to, in his own words, make the GOP “less radical” on abortion, including by having the national Republican Party platform rewritten to reflect his more liberal position.
At the same time, his continued difference from Democrats on issues such as “transitioning” gender-confused minors and Harris and Democrats’ continued support for a comprehensive far-left policy agenda including unlimited abortion-on-demand is expected to keep most conservatives and Republicans resigned to accepting him as preferable.
Vice President Kamala Harris currently leads Trump by 2% in RealClearPolitics’ popular vote polling average and by 3.7% to 4% according to RaceToTheWH (depending on whether former independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is counted), but margins remain extremely close in the swing states that will decide the Electoral College outcome.