Flipping the Fact Checkers
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Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, and so it goes with journalistic “fact checkers.” Sen. J.D. Vance made a slip of the tongue last week, which prompted CBS News to reveal the truth unwittingly.
In an Aug. 11 “Face the Nation” interview with Margaret Brennan, Mr. Vance said that Donald Trump is “trying to find some common ground” on abortion. Meanwhile, “you have Democrats who supported abortion right up to the moment—and sometimes even beyond the moment—of birth, which is just sick stuff.”
“That’s not accurate,” Ms. Brennan admonished him.
“It is accurate,” he replied. “In fact, the Born Alive Act, multiple members of the current Democratic administration, including our vice president, supported that legislation—they have supported taxpayer-funded abortions up to the moment of birth.”
The screen, moments later, cuts to the studio, where Ms. Brennan reads from a script: “We want to clarify what Sen. Vance said about the Born Alive [Abortion] Survivors Protection Act and his claim that Vice President Harris supported the legislation. A CBS News fact-check finds that Harris voted against advancing the bill twice when she was a senator, and has previously called it extreme and a setback to reproductive rights in America. We found no evidence that anyone who currently serves in the Biden administration voted for it either.” Then the interview continues.
It’s true: Ms. Harris opposed the bill, which would have required medical professionals to “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health” of a child who survived an abortion procedure as a “reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.” In 2020 she and almost all Senate Democrats killed the bill on a procedural vote. When Rep. Ann Wagner (R., Mo.) introduced it last year in the House, it passed 220-210, with only one Democrat, Henry Cuellar, in favor.
Democrats argue that the bill is unnecessary because Congress passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002, and every state forbids murder. But the 2002 law establishes no penalties for failing to provide care and merely states that children who survive attempted abortions are, legally speaking, persons. As of January 2023, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, “only 18 states have laws offering robust protections to babies who survive abortions.” That number declined by one when Gov. Tim Walz signed a law repealing Minnesota’s requirement that medical personnel “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.”
The encounter raises an interesting question: What’s more tempting for the press, the urge to catch a Republican in a falsehood or the desire to conceal a Democrat’s radical positions?
Perhaps Mr. Vance could test it by intentionally misspeaking about Ms. Harris’s views. “The vice president voted to ban abortion after infants can feel pain,” he could say. No she didn’t! “Ms. Harris doesn’t believe taxpayers should fund elective abortions.” Yes she does! Tactical denial might be an effective way for Mr. Vance to get out truths the media finds inconvenient.
