ABC Debate Moderator’s Fact Check Ignores What Tim Walz’s State Can Do To Infants Born Alive After Attempted Abortions

Linsey Davis, the ABC host who fact checked former President Donald Trump’s abortion claims during Tuesday’s debate, ignored that infants born alive in Minnesota following an unsuccessful abortion can be left for dead.

Trump claimed during Tuesday’s debate that some Democratic states allow infants born after failed abortions to be killed, pointing to Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s home state specifically. The statement prompted Davis to say “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

Walz, however, signed an omnibus bill in 2023 that allowed physicians to refuse life-saving care to infants born after failed abortions.

Twenty-four abortion procedures between 2015 and 2022 led to live births, according to Minnesota Department of Health records. Of the infants born alive during abortion procedures between 2015 and 2022, medical professionals provided seven with “comfort care” in an attempt to make their deaths more comfortable whereas “no specific steps taken to preserve life were reported” in one 2017 case, the National Catholic Register reported.

The legislation signed by Walz in 2023 repealed requirements mandating that abortion providers report live births.

A previous Minnesota law required that “all 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” for infants born after failed abortions. Walz’s bill removed language mandating that medical workers “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant” and replaced it with language instructing them to “care for the infant who is born alive.”

Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Tina Liebling, who sponsored the omnibus bill, argued in April 2023 that “comfort care” is more appropriate for infants born alive during abortions than “aggressive care to keep that infant alive whether or not the parents want that,” according to NCR.

“The moderators were in the tank for Kamala Harris and clearly biased against President Trump,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They wrongly ‘fact checked’ President Trump but did not press Kamala when she refused to say whether she supports restrictions on late-term abortions. Kamala proved she is a radical pro-late term abortion extremist.”

Harris refused to endorse any limits on abortion access at Tuesday’s debate. Minnesota has no gestational limit on abortion, according to KFF News.

Minnesota isn’t the only state that allows physicians to refuse life-saving care to infants born after botched abortion. Montana voters in 2022 rejected a ballot measure that would have required medical personnel to make an effort to save the lives of infants delivered alive during an abortion, The New York Times reported. Montana, however, limits abortion after fetal viability, according to KFF News.

ABC, the Minnesota governor’s office and the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.