VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Senator J.D. Vance is a swell guy and I pray he & President Donald Trump win the election in just over a month to save America from the hell hole it will become under Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz should the Democrat ticket prevail instead.
I just wish the Republicans weren’t weak as dish water on abortion in the clearest moral travesty since the legal trade, transport and ownership of slaves was abolished thanks to politicians with the fortitude and conviction of William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln.
In yesterday’s Vice Presidential debate, J.D. Vance was served up one soft ball after another, but instead of smashing it out of the park, he looked embarrassed by and unable (or unwilling) to defend the sanctity of life.
Here’s what I would’ve said if I was debating the moderators and Tim Walz.
Nora asks Walz:
“Now to the issue of reproductive rights. Governor Walz, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, you signed a bill into law that made Minnesota one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion. Former President Trump said in the last debate that you believe abortion, quote, in the ninth month is absolutely fine. Yes or no? Is that what you support? I’ll give you two minutes.”
Walz replied:
“That’s not what the bill says. But look, this issue is what’s on everyone’s mind. Donald Trump put this all into motion. He brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v. Wade, 52 years of personal autonomy.
And then he tells us, oh, we send it to the states. It’s a beautiful thing.Amanda Zaworski would disagree with you on it’s a beautiful thing. A young bride in Texas waiting for their child at 18 weeks, she has a complication, a tear in the membrane. She needs to go in. The medical care at that point needs to be decided by the doctor. And that would have been an abortion. But in Texas, that would have put them in legal jeopardy. She went home, got sepsis, nearly dies, and now she may have difficulty having children.”
My response?
Before I respond to Tim, I’m not going to let the moderators who are meant to be impartial employ the partisan euphemism “reproductive rights” when the real issue they are wanting to debate is abortion. If it’s as positive and natural as y’all want voters to believe it is, then call it what it is and stop trying to spin the reality of it.
The accurate adjective if one is needed would be destructive rights, no reproductive. The unique human life biologically begins at fertilisation, not some arbitrarily chosen later stage. After fertilisation, congratulations: you’re parents. The choice you’re seeking the right to after that is destruction of the unique living human conceived, so we are not at all talking about “reproductive rights”.
Tim, it’s a malicious lie that there is any anti-abortion law anywhere written so badly that life-saving medical care is denied to a mother because of it. And if there were one, the solution isn’t to literally throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to write laws clearly criminalising elective procedures with the primary objective of killing children in the womb, and more clearly discriminating them from last resort, necessary medical procedures to preserve the mother’s human life as a matter of routine triage.
No credible pro-life position would advocate for or approve of a law which says the human remains of a deceased fetus must be left inside the grieving mother risking sepsis. At that point the child is already dead and the element of intent to kill is not present, so there is no ethical violation in removing the already dead child.
Tim Walz continued:
“Or in Kentucky, Hadley Duvall, a 12-year-old child raped and impregnated by her stepfather. Those are horrific. Now, when got asked about that, Senator Vance said two wrongs don’t make a right. There is no right in this. So in Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade. We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care.”
Tim, let’s not pretend you’re obsessed with protecting women or even young girls who conceive children by the tragic, traumatic violence of rape. Such extreme and distressing cases represent less than a fifth of a percent of all abortions.
95% of all abortions are performed on healthy women with healthy babies, and that’s where the debate must be centred if you want to be taken seriously as debating the real issue.
If you can’t even agree the overwhelming majority of abortions are a gross violation of the fundamental human right to life, why would we try to see eye to eye on the fringe circumstances where a mother might be vulnerable to an abortion choice?
But to grant you the assumption of sincerity for a moment, the only compassionate way to navigate the trauma and tragedy of a child becoming a mother by rape or incest is to be clear eyed and true about the facts.
She is a mother. She is pregnant with a living human. No living human has less human rights than any other. It is always wrong to deliberately kill an innocent human being (normal medical triage ethics not withstanding). A mother will never recover from the trauma of having the life of her child deliberately taken.
Tim, it is the opposite of compassion to perform an abortion procedure on a 12 year old child. It is a second, violent violation of her body and mental health, and such offenders deserve the same punishment as her rapist if not worse.
That little girl needs to be saved from ever seeing her rapist stepfather ever again, but there is no solution to her trauma in inflicting the additional, fresh trauma of killing her baby.
Shame on you, and every abortion apologist like you, standing on the trauma and tragedy of any sexual violence to promote the deliberate killing of healthy living humans conceived by healthy women, which is what we’re actually debating.
“But, look, this is not where if you don’t know Amanda or a Hadley, you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies. It’s going to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access to infertility treatments. For so many of you out there listening, me included, infertility treatments are why I have a child. That’s nobody else’s business, but those things are being proposed.
And the catch-all on this is, well, the states will decide what’s right for Texas might not be right for Washington. That’s not how this works. This is basic human rights. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. This is about health care. In Minnesota, we are ranked first in health care for a reason. We trust women. We trust doctors.”
No Tim, life is basic human rights. You logically don’t get the right to grow up, get married or plan a family if you first don’t get the right to survive an abortionist’s trade. You can have all the fertility treatments you like as long as none of them are destructive to any unique, living human. Don’t treat voters with the contempt to scare them with lies. There is no valid right to take an innocent human’s life, and God bless every parent trying to conceive. We are 100% supportive of your access to non-destructive therapies.
If you want to know what the Constitution says about taking human life, it’s in the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. It says, “Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Philosophical debates about personhood are transparent deflections from the biological, inescapable reality that every single person began life at fertilisation.
You lie when you say this is about health care. This is all about the sociopathic desire of some people to still treat other living humans like private property and to deliberately take their life if that’s the owner’s choice. That’s not care, that’s killing, and it denies the principle of equal protection.
Transcript
(43:49) Now to the issue of reproductive rights. (43:51) Governor Walz, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, you signed a bill into law that made Minnesota one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion.
(44:02) Former President Trump said in the last debate that you believe abortion, quote, in the ninth month is absolutely fine. (44:11) Yes or no? (44:12) Is that what you support? (44:13) I’ll give you two minutes. (44:14) That’s not what the bill says.
(44:15) But look, this issue is what’s on everyone’s mind. (44:19) Donald Trump put this all into motion. (44:22) He brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v. Wade, 52 years of personal autonomy.
(44:29) And then he tells us, oh, we send it to the states. (44:32) It’s a beautiful thing. (44:34) Amanda Zaworski would disagree with you on it’s a beautiful thing.
(44:37) A young bride in Texas waiting for their child at 18 weeks, she has a complication, a tear in the membrane. (44:44) She needs to go in. (44:45) The medical care at that point needs to be decided by the doctor.
(44:49) And that would have been an abortion. (44:51) But in Texas, that would have put them in legal jeopardy. (44:54) She went home, got sepsis, nearly dies, and now she may have difficulty having children.
(44:59) Or in Kentucky, Hadley Duvall, a 12-year-old child raped and impregnated by her stepfather. (45:06) Those are horrific. (45:08) Now, when got asked about that, Senator Vance said two wrongs don’t make a right.
(45:12) There is no right in this. (45:14) So in Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade. (45:19) We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care.
(45:23) But, look, this is not where if you don’t know Amanda or a Hadley, you soon will. (45:29) Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies. (45:33) It’s going to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access to infertility treatments.
(45:42) For so many of you out there listening, me included, infertility treatments are why I have a child. (45:47) That’s nobody else’s business, but those things are being proposed. (45:51) And the catch-all on this is, well, the states will decide what’s right for Texas might not be right for Washington.
(45:58) That’s not how this works. (45:59) This is basic human rights. (46:01) We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world.
(46:09) This is about health care. (46:10) In Minnesota, we are ranked first in health care for a reason. (46:14) We trust women.
(46:14) We trust doctors. (46:16) Senator, do you want to respond to the governor’s claim? (46:17) Will you create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency? (46:21) No, Nora, certainly we won’t. (46:23) And I want to talk about this issue, because I know a lot of Americans care about it, and I know a lot of Americans don’t agree with everything that I’ve ever said on this topic.
(46:30) And, you know, 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. (46:42) And, you know, one of them is actually very dear to me. (46:45) And I know she’s watching tonight, and I love you.
(46:48) And she told me something a couple years ago that she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship. (46:56) And I think that what I take from that, as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve 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. (47:14) And I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do.
(47:18) I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. (47:23) I want us to support fertility treatments. (47:25) I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies.
(47:28) I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. (47:34) And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options. (47:40) Now, of course, Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically that we have a big country and it’s diverse.
(47:48) And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia. (47:51) Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona. (47:54) And the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy.
(48:04) And I think that’s what makes the most sense in a very big, a very diverse, and let’s be honest, sometimes a very, very messy and divided country. (48:13) Governor, would you like to respond and also answer the question about restrictions? (48:16) Yeah, well, the question got asked when Donald Trump made the accusation that wasn’t true about Minnesota. (48:22) Well, let me tell you about this idea that there’s diverse states.
(48:25) There’s a young woman named Amber Thurman. (48:27) She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. (48:30) Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care.
(48:37) Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth. (48:41) The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography? (48:54) There’s a very real chance, had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today. (49:00) That’s why the restoration of Roe versus Wade.
(49:03) When you listen to Vice President Harris talk about this subject and you hear me talk about it, you hear us talking exactly the same. (49:08) Donald Trump is trying to figure out how to get the political right of this. (49:13) I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what’s happening.
(49:15) His running mate, though, does not, and that’s the problem. (49:18) Governor, your time is up. (49:19) Senator, let me ask you about that.
(49:21) He mentioned, I think referring to a national ban. (49:24) In the past, you have supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. (49:29) In fact, you said, if someone can’t support legislation like that, quote, you are making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world.
(49:39) My question is, why have you changed your position? (49:43) Well, Nora, first of all, I never supported a national ban. (49:46) I did during when I was running for Senate in 2022 talk about setting some minimum national standard. (49:51) For example, we have a partial birth abortion ban in place in this country at the federal level.
(49:56) I don’t think anybody’s trying to get rid of that, or at least I hope not. (49:58) Though I know that Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance. (50:02) But, Nora, you know, one of the things that changed 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.
(50:13) And I think that what I learned from that, Nora, is that we’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust. (50:18) So many young women would love to have families. (50:21) So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships.
(50:28) And we have got to earn people’s trust back. (50:31) 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. (50:41) And that’s what real leadership is.
(50:43) Governor, your response? (50:44) I’m going to respond on the pro-abortion piece of that. (50:47) No, we’re not. (50:48) We’re pro-women.
(50:49) We’re pro-freedom to make your own choice. (50:52) We know what the implications are to not be that. (50:55) Women having miscarriages, women not getting the care, physicians feeling like they may be prosecuted for providing that care.
(51:03) And as far as making sure that we’re educating our children and giving them options, Minnesota’s a state with one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates. (51:10) We understand that, too. (51:12) We know that the options need to be available, and we make that true.
(51:15) We also make it we’re a top three state for the best place to raise children. (51:20) But these two things to try and say that we’re pro-children but we don’t like this or you guys are pro-abortion, that’s not the case at all. (51:28) We are pro-freedoms for women to make their choices.
(51:30) And we’re going, and Kamala Harris is making the case, to make options for children more affordable, a $6,000 child tax credit. (51:38) But we’re not going to base that on the backs of making someone like Amber Thurman drive 600 miles to try and get health care. (51:44) Senator? (51:45) I may respond to that.
(51:46) First of all, Governor, I agree with you. (51:47) Amber Thurman should still be alive, and there are a lot of people who should still be alive, and I certainly wish that she was. (51:52) And maybe you’re free to disagree with me on this and explain this to me, but as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, (52:02) it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.
(52:13) That is, I think, whether you’re pro-choice or pro-abortion, that is fundamentally barbaric. (52:19) And that’s why I use that word, Nora, is because some of what we’ve seen, do you want to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions against their will? (52:26) Because Kamala Harris is supported suing Catholic nuns to violate their freedom of conscience. (52:31) We can be a big and diverse country where we respect people’s freedom of conscience and make the country more pro-baby and pro-family.
(52:38) But please. (52:39) Yes, Governor, please respond. (52:40) Look, this is one where there’s always something there.
(52:42) This is a very simple proposition. (52:45) These are women’s decisions to make about their health care decisions and the physicians who know best when they need to do this. (52:51) Trying to distort the way a law is written to try and make a point, that’s not it at all.
(52:55) But what was I wrong about, Governor? (52:56) Please tell me. (52:57) What was I wrong about? (52:57) That is not the way the law is written. (52:59) Look, I’ve given.
(53:00) But how? (53:01) I’ve given this advice on a lot of things, that getting involved, getting against. (53:04) That’s been misread, and it was fact-checked at the last debate. (53:06) But the point on this is, is there’s a continuation of these guys to try and tell women or to get involved.
(53:12) I use this line on this. (53:13) Just mind your own business on this. (53:15) Things work best when Roe versus Wade was in place.
(53:18) When we do a restoration of Roe, that works best. (53:21) That doesn’t preclude us from increasing funding for children. (53:25) It doesn’t increase us from making sure that once that child’s born, like in Minnesota, they get meals.
(53:31) They get early childhood education. (53:33) They get health care. (53:34) So the hiding behind we’re going to do all these other things, when you’re not proposing them in your budget, Kamala Harris is proposing them.
(53:41) She’s proposing all those things to make life easier for families. (53:44) I asked a specific question, Governor. (53:46) You gave me a slogan as a response.
(53:47) It’s not the case. (53:48) It’s not true. (53:49) That’s not what the law says.
(53:50) So you fact-checked it with President Trump. (53:53) Gentlemen, there’s a lot to discuss. (53:55) We have to move on, and we’re going to be right back with much more of the CBS News vice presidential debate in just a moment.
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Dave Pellowe is a Christian political educator & commentator, founder of The Good Sauce, convener of the annual Australian Church And State Summit and host of Good Sauce’s weekly The Church And State Show. Since 2016 Dave has undertaken the mission of arming Christians to redeem culture through events from Perth to Auckland, videos, podcasts and articles published in multiple journals across Australia and New Zealand. [more]
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