Fox News host Shannon Bream corrected Trump campaign spokesman Corey Lewandowski’s lie that Democrats support infanticide.
On Fox News Sunday, Bream noted that Trump has flip flop on the issue of abortion this week, a move that has frustrated several anti-abortion advocates, including leading pro-life activist Lila Rose, who suggested that she will not support Trump in November.
“Can you afford to offend that constituency?” Bream asked.
“If she if she chooses to stay home, then by, you know, tacit endorsement, she’s supporting Kamala Harris, who has had a radical position on the issue of abortion,” Lewandowski responded. “Many Democrats believe that you can have an abortion not only on up until the last week, but also in some cases after the baby’s been born.”
Bream offered some light push back noting that “infanticide is wrong” and several Democrats disavow the idea.
“Democrats say theyey disavow the idea of infanticide or of a baby that does survive an abortion somehow their life being taken at that point,” Bream said. “We can continue that debate, because there are a number of states that do allow it through pregnancy. But I think everybody agrees infanticide is illegal and wrong.”
Several Republicans have promoted the false claim that Democrats support infanticide.
This appeared to have stemmed from comments former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam made in 2019 while discussing his opposition to a House bill that loosens several restrictions on late-term abortion, including removing the requirement that a physician and two consulting physicians sign off on the procedure.
“This is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved,” Northam said in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
He continued: “When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physicians — more than one physician, by the way — and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s non-viable.”
Northam then went on to describe a specific case involving the birth of an infant that is unable to survive on its own outside the womb.
“In this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered,” Northam said. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
A spokesperson for Northam told Vox at the time that the “governor had ‘absolutely not’ been referring to the euthanasia of infants born after a failed abortion” and that he was talking about a “tragic and extremely rare case in which a woman with a nonviable pregnancy or severe fetal abnormalities went into labor.”
Though the bill was ultimately rejected by the Virginia legislature, Republicans have taken Northam’s comments out of context since then to promote the false claim that all Democrats support aborting babies even after birth.
