Trump says voters will decide on abortion. Not in North Carolina, they won’t.

Amid many of Trump’s lies in his debate with Kamala Harris was the suggestion that the fall of Roe left voters to decide abortion laws. But Republicans in North Carolina have refused to put the issue to on the ballot. 

Amid the many lies, misleading claims, and misstatements Donald Trump shared about abortion rights in his debate with Kamala Harris Tuesday night, he offered a kernel of truth.

He said that voters in Kansas and Ohio, two Republican leaning states, had passed amendments protecting abortion rights. Indeed they did, and by wide margins. 

But the truth stopped at the kernel.

Those votes, Trump said, were evidence of the “great service” he provided in appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion protections, allowing state legislatures to pass abortion bans.

“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,” Trump said. “And that’s what happened … Each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people now.”

That’s not at all what happened. 

Most Americans did not want Roe to fall. Republican state legislatures are the ones passing abortion bans, not the people.

And only about two dozen states allow for citizen-led initiatives, giving voters the direct chance to determine their abortion laws. Most of the states with abortion bans, including North Carolina, have refused to give the people a vote on the issue, blocking efforts to put the same kind of ballot measures that passed in Kansas and Ohio before the voters. Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Nebraska are the exceptions.

North Carolina Republicans, who control supermajorities in both chambers, did add ballot measures for voters to consider in November, but abortion protections were not among them. State Sen. Rachel Hunt, a Democrat, introduced a ballot measure to protect abortion rights, but Republican leaders ignored it. 

Politically, that’s not surprising. In every state that put the issue directly to voters, voters overwhelmingly voted to protect abortion rights. Voters in zero states voted to restrict them.

While Harris vowed to sign a bill reestablishing Roe’s protections, if she wins the presidency and Democrats retake Congress, Trump declined to say whether he would sign or veto a nationwide abortion ban if it made it to his desk. 

Here are some of the other false statements Trump made at the debate:

• The claim: “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, They all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states.”

The reality: That’s obviously not true. Sure some far-right legal scholars and many Republicans wanted Roe to fall, but really no Democrats wanted it, the majority of Americans were against it, and nearly every major medical association in the world says that abortion bans are dangerous. 

In the weeks before North Carolina passed its 12-week abortion ban last year, more than 1,400 doctors and medical providers in the state wrote an open letter to Republican lawmakers warning them that the ban would create medically unnecessary burdens, tangle doctors in legal uncertainty, and put women in danger. 

In the year since the ban passed in North Carolina, their warnings came true. 

Dr. Erica Pettigrew, one of the doctors who signed the open letter in North Carolina, said in a text message on Wednesday that she was “appalled to watch a man so close to becoming president again spewing such ignorant lies about healthcare.”

She added: “It’s hard to know where to even start with all of his harmful deceptions.”

• The claim: “Under Roe v. Wade you could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month, and probably after birth.”

The reality: The protections of Roe v. Wade made it clear that unless the mother’s health was in danger or there were severe fetal anomalies, abortion was only legal until fetal viability, or about 24-28 weeks of pregnancy. 

And the vast majority of abortion care (93%) takes place at or before 13 weeks of pregnancy. 

The idea that women are deciding on a last minute whim to seek abortion care is fundamentally untrue, doctors and numerous studies say.

“A pregnant person at 38 weeks doesn’t walk out of Starbucks with their coffee and say, ‘You know, nevermind,’” Dr. Katherine Farris, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and an abortion provider in Charlotte, told Cardinal & Pine last year. 

When abortion care does happen late in pregnancy, it’s because something has gone terribly wrong with a wanted pregnancy, either the discovery of severe genetic abnormalities, or direct threats to the mother’s life. 

“Abortion later in pregnancy is exceedingly rare, and occurs only in the event of serious complications,” Dr. Rachel Jensen, a family planning doctor in the Triangle, said in a text message on Wednesday. “That Donald Trump would suggest otherwise is deeply insensitive to the pregnant people and their families who face such difficult decisions.”

She added: “Either Trump does not care enough about the wellbeing of women to be informed on this issue, or he is lying intentionally. Either way, he has once again shown himself to be callous and careless with the lives of women.”

So if Trump supports exceptions for the life of the mother like he says he does, then that means he is OK with the small percentages of abortions that take place in the seventh, eighth, and ninth month of pregnancy, because they are often necessary to save the mother’s life.

Also, killing a child after birth is murder, not an abortion, and murder is illegal in every state. 

• The claim: “I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. I believe strongly in it. Ronald Reagan did also, 85% of Republicans do exceptions, very important.”

The reality: Trump has consistently supported exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, yes. But if 85% of Republicans support exceptions, they aren’t acting like it. 

Nearly half of Republican legislatures that passed abortion bans in their states did not include exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Some of the states that do include exceptions for rape and incest add extra barriers that would likely deter some women from reporting the crimes committed against them.

And while North Carolina’s ban does include exceptions for all three, Trump wouldn’t have to look far to find a prominent state Republican who has mocked the idea of exceptions.

Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor whom Trump endorsed this year, has frequently said that if it were up to him, “you can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason.”

“It makes no difference to me why or how that child ended up in that womb,” he said in a separate event.

“Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers,” he said in another video. “It is about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”