Patrick Semansky/AP
At tonight’s final presidential debate in Las Vegas, host Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump whether he would like the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States. Trump evaded the question, reiterating his promise to appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices and said the question of legal abortion should be left up to the states.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, used the moment as an opportunity to offer a stirring defense of a woman’s right to choose. “We have come too far to have that turn back now,” Clinton said, reminding the audience that Trump has “said women should be punished; that there should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions. And I could just not be more opposed to that kind of thinking.”
In a follow-up question, Wallace asked Clinton about her opposition to a ban on late-term abortions. Clinton spoke about the “heartbreaking” decisions that often lead to this procedure (typically, late-term abortions are the result of a mother’s health complication or a severe fetal abnormality), saying, “I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.”
Trump replied by twisting Clinton’s position on late-term abortion: “Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother.”
