PHILADELPHIA (LifeSiteNews) — Former Republican President Donald Trump and current Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris squared off Tuesday night in their first presidential debate, which covered inflation, immigration, Russia, Afghanistan, environmental policy, and more, including an animated exchange over abortion.
Early on in the event hosted by ABC News, Harris tried to tie Trump to Project 2025, a collaboration between conservative groups and Trump administration alumni to develop a detailed set of plans and resources originally meant to help the former president more effectively advance conservative goals and hire a more reliable staff.
In 2022, Trump credited lead project backer the Heritage Foundation for “lay[ing] the groundwork and detailed plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” This year, however, he has repeatedly denied knowledge of, affiliation with, and support for Project 2025.
“You’re going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” Harris said Tuesday night, echoing a recurring theme of her campaign messaging. “What you’re going to hear is a dangerous and detailed playbook called Project 2025.”
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump replied. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together. They came up with some ideas, I guess, some good, some bad, but it makes no difference.”
Soon after, Trump was asked about his decision to come out against Florida’s Amendment 4 to establish a right to abortion in the state Constitution, one day after suggesting he might vote for it to overturn the Sunshine State’s six-week abortion ban. He answered that the decision came down to opposing late-term abortion, emphasizing Democrats’ extremism on the subject.
Harris responded by insisting that “nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America.” In fact, data indicates that more than 50,000 abortions a year are committed after 15 weeks and 10,000 after 20 weeks, and Democrats including Harris consistently oppose restricting them, regardless of exceptions for the medical scenarios they claim necessitate such late-term abortions.
Trump also, as he often does, invoked infamous comments that former Virginia Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam (whom Trump initially misidentified as the governor of West Virginia) made in 2019 suggesting he would allow infanticide, which Democrats deny is a real phenomenon. But while infanticide is technically illegal under the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002, that law does not contain criminal penalties that would provide for meaningful enforcement, and in the following years Democrats have overwhelmingly opposed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would give that ban the necessary teeth.
“Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine,” Trump added. “He also says execution after birth – it’s execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born – is OK, and that’s not OK with me.” As governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz signed into law the so-called Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, which protects abortion up until birth.
Trump went on to frame his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade as resolving “an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years. Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote, and that’s what happened.”
Harris agreed that “Donald Trump hand-selected members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade,” but rather than defusing the issue, took that to mean every subsequently enforceable pro-life law in the country was one of “Trump’s abortion bans,” which “make no exception for rape and incest” (in fact, the various bans currently in effect vary significantly in their exceptions and other details).
“The government and Donald Trump should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” she declared.
“I’m not in favor of an abortion ban, but it doesn’t matter, because this issue has now been taken over by the states,” Trump stated. “Each individual state is voting, it’s in the vote of the people now.”
The former president specifically avoided an explicit statement that he would veto an abortion ban that reached his desk (something his running mate JD Vance answered in the affirmative last month), insisting “I wouldn’t have to,” because it would never make it through Congress. “I’m not signing a ban because we’ve got what everybody wanted,” he said.
For her part, Harris refused to answer if there were any abortion limits she would support, instead falling back on the refrain that she supports “restoring the provisions of Roe.” She went on to tie Trump to restrictions on embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, which Trump rebuked by citing his self-declared status as a “leader” in support of IVF. Before the abortion portion of the debate ended, both candidates traded final jabs about the questions they dodged (Trump and the veto pen, Harris and the third trimester).
With both campaigns pledging to satisfy their respective bases in some ways while running to the center in others, polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH continue to show Harris leading Trump in both national polling and Electoral College, although their standing has narrowed in recent days.