Fact checking abortion

The general media seem to have a consensus about the recent presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Firstly, Trump is somewhat economical with the truth and needs to be fact checked; and secondly that Harris’s strongpoint is abortion.

From BBC Verify to the ABC moderators, it appears that ‘fact checking’ is all the rage. So, I thought I would do a little of my own for the benefit of Christian Today readers.

At the beginning of the debate about abortion, Harris said we were going to hear a bunch of lies. She was right – there were many.

1. “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born. This statement was made by one of the moderators. This was a disingenuous ‘fact check’. While infanticide is not yet legal in any US state, in some of the states where abortion is allowed at any time, babies who are born alive after a failed abortion can be left to die. Ralph Northam, the former Virginia governor, testified that the infant would be delivered and then left to die. In 2019, Harris herself voted against legislation that would have given protection to babies born alive after failed abortions. Tim Walz, her vice-presidential candidate, signed legislation which gave an unqualified right to abortion up to the moment of birth and removed protections for children born alive after abortion. Of course, this is rare – just as the extreme cases for abortion, like a life-threatening danger to the mother are rare – yet it is permitted and does happen.

2. “Donald Trump will sign a national abortion ban under his Project 2025.” He said he was not signing a ban because there was no reason to sign a ban. He explicitly stated, “I am not in favour of an abortion ban.” And he denies that Project 2025 is anything to do with him.

3. “Couples who pray and dream of having a family have been denied IVF under Trump’s abortion ban.” As he pointed out, he was a leader on IVF. Abortion restrictions do not prevent IVF.

4. “Doctors are scared of treating miscarriages in case they are accused of abortion.” If that were the case – and there is no evidence it is (where are those ABC fact checkers when we need them?!), then the doctors would be wrong. Miscarriage is entirely different from abortion.

5. “It’s insulting to the women of America to suggest that women are asking for an abortion near full term.” Harris was answering the question about whether she would support any restrictions on abortion. To be more accurate, she was avoiding the question by stating that this just does not happen. If she was telling the truth then why wouldn’t it be insulting to the women of Alaska, Colorado, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon and Vermont that their governments all allow abortion on demand up to full term? Why do they not restrict abortion up to foetal viability, as does her own state of California? Was her vice-presidential pick, Walz, insulting women when he passed a law saying they could have an abortion up to nine months for any reason? And why did the moderators of the debate not fact check her on this?

6. “Abortion is reproductive healthcare.” This is a double lie and a masterpiece of Orwellian ‘1984’ style language. “War is Peace”, “Lies are Truth”, “Love is Hate”. Abortion is about preventing reproduction, not enabling it. Its purpose is to stop the birth of a child. In more than 99 per cent of cases this is not about ‘healthcare’. A tiny percentage of abortions occur in order to save the life of the mother. That would be healthcare. But taking the life of the baby for economic or social reasons is precisely the opposite of healthcare. Abortion is largely for economic or social care, rather than healthcare.

7. “I will restore the protections of Roe v. Wade.” “This is all about reproductive freedom.” This is a half lie. There is indeed ‘protection’ for those who wish to take the life of their own baby. But there is no protection for the baby. Abortion is to reproductive freedom as slavery is to economic freedom.

8. “The freedom to make decisions about your own body should not be made by the government.” Given that Harris was a part of the government that mandated vaccinations for all federal employees, she clearly does not believe that the government has no right to tell people what to do with their own bodies. We do not have the right to walk naked down the high street, defecate in public gardens, or to drive drunk on the highway. Government will and should limit us in some areas of our bodily autonomy. Of course, there are questions as to how much they should limit us but the argument for absolute bodily autonomy from a Vice-President who limits bodily autonomy is a hypocritical lie.

9. “The government and Donald Trump especially do not have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body.” This argument from bodily autonomy also fails when you recognise that there is more than one body involved. The government limits our bodily autonomy when we are a threat to another human body. Which is why, for example, we ban drink-driving. This is clearly the case in abortion. There is another human body involved. The baby is a human baby – a human life – with its own gender, blood type, heart, body etc. Because abortion is a threat to the life of another human being it is entirely appropriate for the government to seek to preserve that life. In passing, we should note that there is also at least one other body involved – that of the father. He is expected, rightly, to pay for and support his own children. Does he have no say at all in whether his child should be killed in the womb?

10. Let’s consider the abandonment of faith or “deeply held belief”. If you are a Catholic like President Biden, or indeed another Christian, then when you walk away from the teachings of Jesus Christ, you are abandoning your faith. Your belief is hardly deeply held if you will give it up for political gain or for a Hellish doctrine of autonomy. The devil’s great temptation in the beginning was to promise that humans would be like God if we just made our own way. The modern lie of complete autonomy ends up making us more like Satan, the destroyer of life, than God, the giver of Life.

It should not surprise us that Harris’s position was full of lies, because it is based on the great lie, coming from the Father of Lies. Sadly, most of our media, politicians and academics take part in this lie and cover up the truth. In 2015, the then California Attorney-General suppressed undercover videos which showed Planned Parenthood abortionists discussing how to dismember a body so that they would not be prosecuted under the partial birth abortion ban and discussing how to distribute body parts. Last week these were finally released, and they are as horrific as they sound. The question is: why would Kamala Harris seek to keep these covered up for nine years and instead prosecute the person who made them?

I recently made a whole podcast on the issue of abortion. It was the most difficult I have ever had to do because it is such a deep, complex and personal subject. Yet the responses indicated just how needed it is for Christians to speak clearly and compassionately into this most divisive of issues. I was contacted by several people who were so thankful that they, or their parents, had resisted the pressure to have an abortion. May God bless America and save it from reverting to a pre-Christian Greco/Roman/Pagan death cult.

David Robertson is the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales. He blogs at The Wee Flea.