In order to push forward “abortion rights” as the centerpiece of their campaign to win the White House, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, are seeking to obscure an ugly and deadly reality: that late-term abortions continue to take place in the United States.

Here’s another ugly and deadly reality: If Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz are elected next month, the numbers of late-term abortions are virtually certain to increase.

Harris and Walz have tried to skirt the issue of late-term abortions, implying that such abortions won’t be more easily available if their permissive national abortion policies come into force. They are trying to sidestep the matter for a simple reason: They know that killing unborn babies this late in pregnancy — at a stage of their development when only pro-abortion zealots can deny their full humanity — is opposed by the overwhelming majority of Americans. 

The central dodge employed by the Harris-Walz ticket is to assert they are seeking merely to return to the legalized abortion framework that existed while Roe v. Wade was still in place. Under those rules, they claim, late-term abortions won’t be an issue at all. When pressed by former president Donald Trump, the GOP candidate, during their Sept. 10 presidential debate about the reality that late-term abortions occurred during the final months of pregnancy while Roe was in place, Harris countered, “That’s not true.”

Actually, it most definitely is.

Here are the relevant facts. According to the most recent available national figures, compiled for 2021 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when Roe v. Wade was still in force, almost 1% of U.S. abortions occur at 21 weeks’ gestation or later — a period during which babies can survive outside of the womb. Given that approximately 1 million babies are killed by legal abortion in America annually, this means that nearly 10,000 late-term abortions were performed that year. (The CDC’s national dataset reported a significantly lower death toll, but it fails to record a substantial percentage of abortions for a variety of reasons, including because four states — one is California — don’t report abortion totals at all.)

Late-term abortions are still happening in the wake of the June 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe. Nine states plus the District of Columbia continue to allow abortions right up until the time of birth. And, in a 2023 article in The Atlantic titled “The Abortion Absolutist,” notorious Colorado late-term abortionist Warren Hern disclosed he was now performing 50% more of the life-ending procedures, partly because of increased numbers of women who were traveling to his abortion facility from other states. 

Abortion supporters routinely claim that almost all late-term abortions are undertaken only after a diagnosis of a fatal fetal abnormality, or because a pregnancy is threatening the mother’s life. This is another untruth. Studies, including some undertaken by pro-abortion researchers, have consistently found the majority of late-term abortions occur for the same reasons as abortions earlier in pregnancy, such as financial pressures and relationship problems. 

Harris has largely been given a free pass from mainstream secular media outlets about the obvious inconsistency between her claims about late-term abortions and the realities of when, why and how often they continue to take place. Walz hasn’t been quite so fortunate. During an Oct. 6 interview on Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream asked him about Minnesota’s abortion-on-demand bill, which he signed into state law in January 2023.

“You signed a bill that makes it legal through all nine months [of pregnancy]. Is that a position you think Democrats should advocate for nationally?” she asked. 

After Walz retorted that “the vice president and I have been clear, the restoration of Roe v. Wade is what we’re asking for,” Bream pointed out that his state’s legislation “goes far beyond Roe v. Wade.” Walz then claimed this assertion had been “debunked,” even though it hasn’t been. Indeed, as Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio accurately pointed out in his Oct. 1 debate with Walz, the Minnesota law is so permissive that it also eradicated most of his state’s previous prohibitions against the denial of medical care to newborn babies who survive abortions.

A final telltale sign regarding Harris and Walz’s true stance on late-term abortions comes by way of the Women’s Health Protection Act, the proposed federal legislation championed by President Joe Biden, Vice President Harris and congressional Democrats as the instrument by which Roe v. Wade should be codified back into national law. To date, the legislation has been thwarted by Republican opposition. But if passed by a future Congress and signed by a future president Kamala Harris, the Women’s Health Protection Act would eradicate all existing state restrictions on abortion, at any stage of pregnancy. And, just like Walz’s Minnesota legislation, it would include no meaningful protections against late-term abortion procedures. 

That’s where the Democratic presidential ticket really stands when it comes to the profound moral repugnance of legalized late-term abortion. They stand in exactly the same place as the most strident of abortion activists: available on demand, right up until birth.