WASHINGTON -- Former President Donald Trump continues to try to depict Democrats as the 鈥溾�� on abortion policy. To make his case, though, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has made wildly inaccurate claims.
In a Fox News interview on Wednesday, Trump said, 鈥淗ard to believe, they have some states passing legislation where you can execute the baby after birth. It鈥檚 crazy.鈥�
Facts First: Trump鈥檚 claim is false. No state has passed or is passing a law that allows the execution of a baby after it is born. Killing a person after birth is . 鈥淓very state explicitly criminalizes infanticide,鈥� , a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said Thursday. 鈥淭here is no basis for this claim,鈥� , a professor at Rutgers Law School, said Thursday.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a CNN request to specify which states Trump was talking about. Mutcherson said: 鈥淭he falsity of the claim can be seen in the fact that Trump never identifies such a state.鈥�
There was at least one instance, in an interview with NBC last year, in which Trump specified that he was making the claim about the state of New York in addition to unspecified 鈥渙ther places.鈥� But he was : New York did not pass a law allowing babies to be killed after birth, though claimed it had.
Similar false claims have circulated about California. Some of those claims were based on criticism of vague language in an early version of a Democratic state legislator鈥檚 2022 that was intended to protect people from being prosecuted over miscarriages, stillbirths and self-managed abortions.
But the vague language was before the bill was signed into law.
Months before passage, a Democratic-led legislative committee that the early text鈥檚 vague use of the phrase 鈥溾�� might have inadvertently left open the interpretation that the bill would immunize people from punishment in all cases in which their baby died in the first days of its life, even in cases where the death was caused by acts after the baby was born. The final bill that was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that the 鈥減erinatal death鈥� immunity is specifically for 鈥減erinatal death due to causes that occurred in utero.鈥�
In other words, there is no basis for a claim that California passed a law legalizing post-birth executions.
A repeated false claim about legal scholars
Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had guaranteed abortion rights around the country. During his current presidential campaign, he has repeatedly made the that all legal scholars had wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and power over abortion policy returned to individual states.
Trump said it again in the Fox News interview: 鈥淚 say, let the states decide. This is 鈥� every legal scholar wanted this to be where abortion should be.鈥�
Facts First: Trump鈥檚 claim that 鈥渆very legal scholar鈥� wanted Roe overturned and the power to set abortion policy returned to the states is not even close to true. Many legal scholars wanted Roe preserved, as several of them reiterated in April comments to CNN.
鈥淎ny claim that all legal scholars wanted Roe overturned is mind-numbingly false,鈥� Mutcherson, who supported the preservation of Roe, said in April.
鈥淒onald Trump鈥檚 claim is flatly incorrect,鈥� , an American University law professor who also did not want Roe overturned, said in April.
Trump鈥檚 claim is 鈥渙bviously not鈥� true, said Ziegler, another scholar who did not want Roe overturned. She said in April: 鈥淢ost legal scholars probably track most Americans, who didn鈥檛 want to overturn Roe. 鈥� It wasn鈥檛 as if legal scholars were somehow outliers.鈥�
You can read a more detailed fact check of this claim .
