VP Debate: Abortion, Gun Violence, Obamacare Make Appearances

Abortion, gun violence, and Obamacare all took center stage Tuesday night as vice presidential candidates Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) took the stage in New York City for their only debate of the campaign.

“I grew up in a working-class family in a neighborhood where I knew a lot of young women who had unplanned pregnancies and decided to terminate those pregnancies because they felt like they didn’t have any other options,” Vance said during the debate, which was hosted by CBS.

He mentioned one friend growing up who told him “a couple years ago that she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship. And I think that what I take from that, as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us.”

“I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the full sense of the word,” Vance added. “I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies … I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to be able to give women more options.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade

Walz pointed out that Vance’s running mate, former president Donald Trump, has bragged about nominating Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

“And then he tells us that to send [abortion decisions] to the states is ‘a beautiful thing,'” said Walz. “Amanda Zurawski would disagree with you on it being a beautiful thing.”

Zurawski, a young bride in Texas, was 18 weeks pregnant when she suffered a complication, but she couldn’t get an abortion because doing so would have put the doctors who performed the procedure in legal jeopardy due to the state’s strict abortion ban, Walz said. “She went home, got sepsis, nearly died, and now she may have difficulty having children. Or in Kentucky, a 12-year-old child is raped and impregnated by her stepfather. Those are horrific [cases].”

“Now, when [the moderator] asked about that, Senator Vance said two wrongs don’t make a right,” Walz said. “There is no right. [They say] it’s up to the states to decide what’s right for Texas might not be right for Washington. That’s not how this works.”

Vance and Walz also discussed the case of Amber Thurman. “Amber Thurman happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state” when it comes to abortions, Walz said. “Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth … How can we as a nation say that your life and your rights — as basic as the right to control your own body — are determined on geography? There’s a real chance that if Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota [where abortion is legal], she would be alive today.”

Dispute Over Minnesota Law

Vance agreed that “Amber Thurman should still be alive, and there are a lot of people who should still be alive.” Vance then brought up a Minnesota bill that Walz signed into law. “The doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion,” Vance said.

“That’s not true,” Walz interjected; however, he offered no further explanation of what the law said. In fact, the law signed by Walz in May 2023 updated a state law related to “infants who are born alive.” Previously, according to ABC7 in Chicago, Minnesota state law said, “All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.” The law was updated to instead say medical personnel must “care for the infant who is born alive.” The update also kept a provision that said, “An infant who is born alive shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law.”

Vance was also asked by moderator Norah O’Donnell why he had changed his mind about supporting a national abortion ban after initially saying he supported a ban after 15 weeks’ gestation. “I never supported a national ban,” Vance replied. “I did, when I was running for the Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard.” But on a 2022 podcast, Vance did say that “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”

Comity on Gun Violence

The subject of gun violence brought some agreement between the two candidates, with Vance saying that “I think the Gov. Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this.” He also said that he trusted local law enforcement to make decisions about how to reduce the problem. When it comes to gun-related crimes, “the gross majority are committed with illegally obtained firearms,” Vance said. “Thanks to [Vice President] Harris’s open border, we have seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by Mexican drug cartels.”

“What do we do about the schools? And I say this not loving the answer … I unfortunately think we have to increase security in our schools; we have to make doors lock better … and increase school resource officers,” Vance said.

Walz, on the other hand, emphasized the use of enhanced background checks and “red flag” laws that remove guns from people who are likely to be a danger to themselves or others. “I’ve got a 17-year-old, and he witnessed a shooting at a community center while playing volleyball,” Walz said. “Look, I’m a hunter. I own firearms, the vice president does too. We understand the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids. In Minnesota, we enacted enhanced red flag laws, enhanced background checks, and we can start to get data. But here’s the problem: we’ve got folks that won’t allow research to even be done on gun violence.”

Walz appeared to be referring to the Dickey amendment, a law enacted in 1997 that blocked the CDC from doing gun control advocacy. The practical effect of the law, however, was that the CDC stopped doing gun violence research entirely. Eventually, in 2020, Congress began again appropriating funds for gun violence research.

Regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), “I think you can make the argument that [former president Trump] salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along,” said Vance. “When Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and healthcare costs, Donald Trump didn’t destroy the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”

Walz disagreed. “Donald Trump … ran [in 2016 on the premise that] the first thing he was going to do on day one was to repeal Obamacare,” he said. “On day one, he tried to sign an executive order repealing the ACA. He signed on to a lawsuit to appeal the ACA, but lost at the Supreme Court, and he would have repealed the ACA had it not been for the courage of [the late Arizona Republican senator] John McCain,” who voted against repealing the law.