Norah O’Donnell Asks Tim Walz Blunt Abortion Question

CBS News host Norah O’Donnell confronted Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) with a blunt question on abortion rights during the vice presidential debate between Walz and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) Tuesday night.

“After Roe v. Wade was overturned, you signed a bill into law that made Minnesota one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion,” O’Donnell began.

“Former President Trump said in the last debate that you believe abortion in the ninth month is ‘absolutely fine.’ Yes or no?”

Walz pushed back on the question’s framing, saying, “That’s not what the bill says.”

He then pivoted to stress the importance of preserving patients’ and doctors’ ability to make their own reproductive health decisions.

“Look, this issue is what’s on everyone’s mind,” Walz said. “Donald Trump put this all into motion. He bragged about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v. Wade — 52 years of personal autonomy. And then he tells us, ‘Oh, send it to the states, it’s a beautiful thing.’”

“Amanda Zurawski would disagree with you on ‘it’s a beautiful thing,’” Walz said, referencing the Texas woman who led a lawsuit alongside several others last year to challenge her state’s severe abortion laws. Zurawski argued that losing access to timely abortion care nearly cost her her life.

“A young bride in Texas, waiting for her child at 18 weeks. She has a complication, a tear in the membrane. She needs to go in,” Walz went on. “The medical care at that point needs to be decided by the doctor, and that would have been an abortion. But in Texas, that would have put them in legal jeopardy. She went home, got sepsis and nearly dies, and now may have difficulty having children.”

He also mentioned Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky woman who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather at 12 years old, and who has taken part in campaign ads for Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats. Later, Walz pointed to Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old Georgia woman who died after trying to seek abortion care for a pregnancy complication.

“So Minnesota, what we did is restore Roe v. Wade. We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care,” Walz said.

The Midwest state is indeed very protective of abortion care, passing new protections swiftly in January 2023 after the Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion in the summer of 2022.

But the law does not state that abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy is “absolutely fine” or encourage these procedures per se — it merely does not ban them. In rare cases, they are deemed necessary. The vast majority of abortions occur relatively early in pregnancy; when an abortion is performed later, it is generally due to health problems with the fetus or concerns over the patient’s health. (It is illegal everywhere in the country to kill a newborn, although Trump and other Republicans have suggested Democrats also encourage this practice.)

“In Minnesota, we are ranked first in health care for a reason: We trust women, we trust doctors,” Walz said.

Jessica Valenti, a journalist who writes frequently on reproductive health, said the framing of the question was “really frustrating.”

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, wrote on social media that the reproductive rights portion of the debate “was strong for Governor Walz.”

“But as a colleague not on this platform noted: ‘the fact that at 45 min into the debate their FIRST abortion question was about whether women in Minnesota have TOO many rights?’ .. problematic.”