On a different debate stage in 2022, then-Minnesota gubernatorial incumbent Tim Walz took his opponent, Republican Dr. Scott Jensen, to task on abortion rights. Jensen had recently shifted his tone on reproductive health care access, attempting to soften his rhetoric to appeal to voters. Walz wasn’t having it.
“My entire career, I’ve trusted women to make their health care decisions,” Walz said at the time, in their only televised prime-time debate. “I don’t believe anybody who sits in this office should come between them.”
“I just want to be absolutely clear: This is on the ballot,” Walz added. “It will impact generations to come.”
In just a few days, on October 1, Walz will once again take the debate stage—this time against another man who has tried to backtrack on his anti-abortion remarks: Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Jensen, who lost to Walz by almost eight percentage points, discussed what it was like to debate Walz and how the governor and the senator should approach Tuesday’s face-off.
Jensen said he thinks that Walz will be “loud and clear” on the issue of abortion access.
“And JD Vance needs to make it very clear that there’s not going to be a federal ban on abortion,” Jensen added. “That’s what Trump has said, and they need to make that very clear.”
In the presidential debate earlier this month, three-time Republican nominee Donald Trump repeatedly failed to answer whether he would veto national abortion ban legislation if it came across his desk.
The Republican ticket has been running on abortion as a “states’ rights” issue—but even Trump doesn’t follow it. While in office, Trump voiced support for a 20-week federal ban and, while running this time around, he previously said he would be open to a 15-week ban.
“If I could just get a yes or no,” ABC News anchor Linsey Davis pressed Trump on the debate stage. “Because your running mate, JD Vance, has said that you would veto if it did come to your desk.”
“Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness,” Trump responded.
The former president has consistently bragged about appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who repealed Roe v. Wade. Trump—with Vance following in line—has been shifting his rhetoric around abortion to appear less extreme on the issue. This week at a rally, Trump even claimed, baselessly, that women “will be protected and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
On a debate stage of his own in 2022, when running for Congress, Vance said that “some minimum national standard” on abortion “is totally fine with me.” After Texas passed its six-week ban in 2021, Vance heralded the legislation, saying, “We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life.” He’s also referred to the political movement for abortion rights as “sociopathic.”
On the campaign trail, Walz has continued to embrace abortion rights.
“Do you like the [policy] where women die because they can’t get health care that they should be able to get if they need reproductive care?” Walz said this month at the Macon-Bibb County Democrats’ headquarters in Georgia.
In January of 2023, Walz signed a bill into law that added a new layer of security to abortion rights, ensuring the state’s existing protections remain in place even if the composition of Minnesota’s courts changes someday.
During Walz’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, he cited his gubernatorial record on abortion rights.
“We also protected reproductive freedom because, in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make,” he said. “And even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”
