Democrats support executing babies after birth, according to a man who said it at a debate

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During a presidential debate, Donald Trump stated that Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, supports “execution after birth, it is execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born.” He had previously said at a rally that Harris supports abortion “right up until birth, and even after birth.” The claim is false. No Democrat supports executing babies after birth. No law permits it. No medical organization advocates it. The word “execution” describes a thing that does not happen.

This is the post-birth abortion claim, and it is worth understanding as a rhetorical structure rather than as a factual assertion. It is not designed to be fact-checked. It is designed to survive fact-checking. The claim takes a real medical procedure (later abortion, which is rare and almost always involves fatal fetal anomalies or severe health risks) and moves it past the boundary of birth, where no procedure exists. “After birth” is the point at which the thing being described stops being abortion and starts being murder, which is the point of the claim: to equate the political opponent’s position with murder.

The move relies on the audience not knowing what “late-term abortion” actually refers to. In US medical practice, the vast majority of abortions occur in the first trimester. Those that occur later are typically because of fetal anomalies incompatible with life or serious risks to the pregnant person’s health. “Post-birth abortion” is not a medical term. It is a political term. It describes nothing.

CBS News, FactCheck.org, and every major fact-checking organization that examined the claim rated it false. The claim persists because it is emotionally impossible to hear without reacting, and the reaction is the point. You do not need the audience to believe Democrats support executing babies. You need them to feel that the subject is too dangerous to discuss calmly. That feeling is the propaganda’s actual product.

Satire verdict: The execution is imaginary. The debate was real. The claim is designed to make the word “abortion” mean “murder” by attaching it to something that does not happen.