ABC moderator’s fact-check of Trump was about postbirth abortions, not late-term ones

ABC News debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis have received criticism from former President Donald Trump and other conservatives for fact-checking Trump several times during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

One social media user criticized Davis’ fact-checking Trump on abortion, but put words in her mouth.

"Last night during the ABC debate, two of the participants, otherwise known as the moderators of the debate, made the false claim to Donald Trump that there is nowhere in the United States where abortion is legal up until birth," a man said in a Sept. 11 Instagram video.

"Unfortunately for ABC, this is their own graphic which clearly shows if you read right here, the states in dark green have no restrictions based on gestational age," the speaker said. 

The Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The video showed a June 2023 ABC News graphic that has since been updated to include three additional states that have no restrictions based on gestational age.

But ABC’s fact-check of Trump on abortion was not about state restrictions on gestational age. The Instagram post criticizes a fact-check that Davis didn’t make, a transcript and video of the exchange shows.

The exchange began when Davis asked Trump why women voters should trust him about reproductive rights policy when he has changed his position on abortion. Most recently, Davis noted, Trump said he supports Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which he previously said was too brief.

Trump responded by falsely accusing Democrats and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, of supporting postbirth abortions.

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"Well, the reason I'm doing that vote is because the plan is, as you know, the vote is, they have abortion in the ninth month. They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, who's doing an excellent job, but the governor before. He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we'll execute the baby.

"And that's why I did that, because that predominates. Because they're radical. The Democrats are radical in that. And her vice presidential pick, which I think was a horrible pick, by the way for our country, because he is really out of it. But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is OK. And that's not OK with me. Hence the vote. But what I did is something for 52 years they've been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states."

Trump mistakenly referred to West Virginia’s governor, when he meant Virginia’s Democratic former governor, Ralph Northam. Trump has repeatedly misstated Northam’s 2019 comments about abortion to claim Northam approves of executing babies. And The Washington Post found that Harris’ running mate Gov. Tim Walz has made no such statements about abortion or "execution after birth."

Trump went on for a few more moments in the debate, then Davis concisely fact-checked Trump’s claim about post-birth abortions.

"There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born," Davis said, before turning to Harris for a response.

As PolitiFact has reported before, willfully killing a newborn child is infanticide and illegal in all 50 states. Fetal deaths in the third trimester are exceedingly rare and usually involve emergencies such as fatal anomalies or life-threatening complications affecting the mother, health experts have said. For fetuses with very short life expectancies, doctors may induce labor and offer palliative care to make the newborn as comfortable as possible. 

Neither moderator fact-checked Trump again on abortion for the rest of the debate.

An Instagram post claiming a moderator falsely told Trump "that there is nowhere in the United States where abortion is legal up until birth" misstates what Davis said. She corrected Trump’s false claim that Democrats support "executing" babies after birth, which is illegal.

We rate the Instagram post False.