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The legislation signed by Walz in 2023 repealed requirements mandating that abortion providers report live births.