Harris was strongest in the debate when he addressed abortion, while Trump relied on old lies

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump has avoided giving direct, consistent, or precise answers to questions about abortion. And in his first debate appearance against Kamala Harris, Trump stuck to that line.

Moderators introduced abortion, one of the biggest issues in the election, by asking about the latest example of Trump’s incoherence on the subject: his position on a Florida ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. In recent weeks, Trump initially suggested he would vote for the measure — which would restore abortion rights in a state that has banned the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy — before quickly backtracking amid outrage from his anti-abortion base.

Asked to explain his turn, Trump said: “The reason I’m taking that vote is because the plan is — you know, the vote is — they’re going to allow abortions in the ninth month.”

Less than a fraction of a percentage point of abortions occur after the 21st week of pregnancy. Executing a baby after birth, which Trump has repeatedly accused Democrats of supporting, would be infanticide and is illegal in all 50 states – as noted by ABC News host Linsey Davis in a fact check after he spoke.

When pressed on abortion, Trump has long since turned to outlandish claims about killing babies. In his final debate against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, he claimed that “you can rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the last day.” That kind of gruesome rhetoric proved useful to Trump at the time, as leaders of the anti-abortion movement encouraged him and eventually helped him into the White House.

But in a post-Roe country where most people support abortion rights, that rhetoric rings different.

“The accusations of extremism are a lot less effective when your own party is affiliated with the movement that most Americans consider extreme,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the legal history of reproductive rights.

Trump also claimed that “every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, every liberal, conservative — they all wanted this issue brought back to these states.” In reality, more than 60% of Americans disapproved of the decision to overturn Roe. Support for abortion rights has surged since Roe was passed, including in red states.

For Harris, meanwhile, the abortion issue provided some of her strongest moments in a debate already filled with them. She spoke passionately about women bleeding from miscarriages and being denied care, rape victims forced to carry unwanted pregnancies. Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster, saw Harris’s comments on abortion as the moment the debate clicked for the vice president.

“The opening was a little bit more mixed,” Lake said. “I think Trump had a strong case on the economy, but she just knocked it out of the park on abortion.”

During her turn to speak, Harris appeared to reference the case of Jaci Stattona woman who was told by hospital staff in Oklahoma that they could not terminate her nonviable pregnancy and instead had to wait in a hospital parking lot until she “collapsed.”

“She’s bleeding to death in the car in the parking lot,” Harris said. “She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12- or 13-year-old incest survivor being forced to carry a pregnancy? They don’t want that.”

Tresa Undem, who has conducted polls on abortion for decades, called Harris’s approach to abortion “unprecedented.”

“For undecided women and undecided independent men, I think it was pretty powerful and it can have an effect,” Undem said. “She reminded people, including undecided voters, that most Americans are behind her. Most Americans believe that women should have control over their own bodies … And she came out on freedom, a value that everyone cares about.”

Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly dodged attempts to veto a nationwide abortion ban and flatly rejected comments from J.D. Vance, his running mate, who said Trump would veto such a ban.

“Well, I honestly haven’t talked to JD about it,” Trump said.

Harris was also evasive at times – When asked directly whether she would support restrictions on abortion, she reiterated her longstanding pledge to support legislation to codify Roe into law, even though Roe did not prevent states from enacting restrictions that affected access to the procedure. (It is also (Congress is unlikely to pass such a bill anytime soon.) In an interview after the debate, Tim Walz, Harris’ vice presidential nominee, also dodged questions about restrictions his boss might support.

In the weeks since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, abortion has become an increasingly important issue for women. A recent New York Times poll found that among all women, it now rivals the economy in importance and is the top voting issue among women under 45. A Harris campaign representative told Rolling Stone that in the first hour of the debate, 71% of the campaign’s donors were women.

“I think she just handled it spectacularly well,” Lake said. “Two-thirds of the impact of the debate is the press’s interpretations after the fact, and the press has been even more positive. When Fox News criticizes Trump and says there should be another debate, you know you’ve won.”

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