Candidates should stop talking about abortion

There are no “after birth” abortions in New York or Virginia. Recent comments from candidates use language taken out of context and distorted to make a point that simply isn’t true. In 2019, Northam, then governor of Virginia, was responding to a hypothetical situation in which a woman discovers late in pregnancy that her baby has serious abnormalities that mean it will not survive outside the womb. Additionally, laws passed in New York in 2019 enshrined the limits set in Roe v Wade that were later erased nationally by Dobbs:

If you have never had to decide whether to continue a pregnancy or undergo chemotherapy for cancer or if you have never had a test showing that the baby you are carrying has no brain or is incompatible with life or if you have never faced an incomplete miscarriage, which means you might bleed out or never face pregnancy, which means your family will disown you, please, stop talking about abortion. These decisions are deeply personal and made all the more difficult by self-righteous talk about the sanctity of life, because what you are really saying is that a woman’s life here on earth, with a family, a job and maybe even other children, is not worth much.

It would be great if candidates focused on the issues that really matter to North Dakotans – jobs, wages, a diverse economy, access to health care and education – and not private issues.

Sabina M Gasper, Bismarck