The origin of Trump's false claim that Democrats wanted to allow the “execution” of babies after birth

CNN
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When former President Donald Trump was asked about his stance on abortion access at Tuesday night's presidential debate, he offered a now-familiar explanation for his support for limiting abortions early in pregnancy and for overturning Roe v. Wade: the idea that otherwise, the execution of newborns after birth would be permitted.

“You can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia,” Trump said. “He said, 'The baby is born, and we will decide what happens to the baby. In other words, we will execute the baby.'”

ABC News' Linsey Davis, one of the debate moderators, responded with a fact check: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after birth.”

So where does Trump's claim about executing newborn babies come from – which he also made in the June 27 CNN debate against President Joe Biden?

It appears to echo comments made by former Virginia (not West Virginia) governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat and pediatric neurologist, in a 2019 interview with Washington radio station WTOP.

Northam was asked about a bill that would remove certain requirements related to the availability of abortion in the second and third trimesters, and in particular about comments by the bill's sponsor, who acknowledged that abortions would be allowed up until immediately before birth.

Northam noted that third-trimester abortions are performed “in cases where there is potential for severe malformation and the fetus is not viable. In this specific example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen: The baby would be born; it would be immobilized; the baby would be resuscitated if the mother and family desired that. And then a discussion would take place between the doctors and the mother.”

Northam's comments sparked a fierce reaction from Republican leadership at the time. Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel wrote on X (then called Twitter) that he would “defend abortions for live births.”

Northam's office accused Republicans at the time of taking his remarks out of context, saying he was referring to “tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a non-viable pregnancy or a case of severe fetal abnormalities, and the governor's comments were limited to the actions doctors would take if a woman went into labor under those circumstances.”

The bill never became law. Currently, abortions are legal in Virginia up to the third trimester.

Five years later, Trump appears to be using the interview as evidence of the Democrats' “radical” stance on abortion. His campaign team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN this week. However, doctors and researchers in the field of reproductive medicine told CNN that his comments were a dramatic misinterpretation of reality.

“That's obviously not true,” said Dr. Diane Horvath, chief medical officer of Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland, a clinic that performs abortions up to 34 weeks of pregnancy.

“It's the same kind of tired phrase that gets thrown around over and over again, and its purpose is to scare people and make them believe that something evil is happening with health care in this country,” she said.

Abortions later in pregnancy are rare: 2021 data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 94% of abortions were performed before 13 weeks of pregnancy, or the first trimester—with the majority of them, 80% of the total, occurring before ninth week.

Less than 1% – 0.9% – were reported after 21 weeks of pregnancy, according to CDC data. That was about 4,070 abortions. But as Horvath pointed out, the CDC data is based on voluntary reporting by states and does not include California and Maryland, where abortions are more readily available in later pregnancies. So the numbers are incomplete and likely do not account for abortions performed later in pregnancy.

Northam did not respond to CNN's request for comment on his statements this week, but Horvath described the circumstances he appeared to be referring to – when a baby is born but does not have a long life expectancy – as “hospice for babies.”

“I think he was talking about incredibly tragic circumstances where the family receives a fetal diagnosis that is incompatible with continuing to live,” she explained. “These families want to spend time with their dying babies and provide comfort so they can die peacefully. … We give a dying baby the same palliative care that we give your dying grandmother.”

Dr. Katrina Kimport, a sociologist and professor in the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted research that interviewed women who had abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy. She described one woman who learned that the fetus she was carrying “had a very serious diagnosis; it was very likely that the fetus would die in the womb, but there was a chance that it could be born alive and then die within a few hours.”

The woman's “most fervent wish,” Kimport recalls, “was to continue the pregnancy and perhaps have the opportunity to hold her baby, to deliver it, perhaps to provide relief and alleviate its suffering.”

She lived in a state that had what Kimport called a “live birth law,” which required babies born alive to be offered all available interventions to save them. Kimport said the woman “was told that because of the law in her state, she could not [give birth the way she wanted]and if she insisted, the state would take the baby away from her.”

The woman eventually left the state to have an abortion, Kimport said.

In general, no one wants to have an abortion in the third trimester, Horvath told CNN.

“People who want an abortion want to do it as quickly as possible,” she said.

They believe that people seeking such abortions typically fall into two categories: those who have received “new information” and those who have had an abortion before but no longer have time to do so due to obstacles.

In their view, new information could relate to the health of the fetus, the patient's own health or changed life circumstances, for example if a partner has become violent.

Horvath pointed out that “homicide is one of the leading causes of death for pregnant women.” CDC data shows that 2% of pregnancy-related deaths in 2020 were due to homicide.

She also noted that it is not as rare as it seems for women to not realize they are pregnant until late in pregnancy, especially when they are very young.

And barriers to treatment can mean that women who wanted an abortion earlier are unable to get one until later in pregnancy.

Kimport described another person she interviewed who wanted a first-time abortion at 11 weeks but lived in a state where Medicaid did not cover the cost of an abortion and she otherwise lacked the money for the procedure.

“By the time she was able to raise the funds she needed, she was further along,” Kimport said, “so the procedure was clinically more complex and more expensive.” Later in the pregnancy, fewer doctors perform abortions, so the woman also had to travel.

“She was already 24 weeks along when it all came together,” Kimport said.

These kinds of barriers, she noted, “have only gotten stronger” since the Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned in 2022. “That's a ban on abortion.”

CNN's Devan Cole contributed to this report.