Pro-life Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sat down with NBC News’s Dasha Burns for an interview that aired Monday. To say that Burns was primed to go after Gov. DeSantis does not do justice to Burns who interrupted, challenged, and in general forgot that this was supposed to be an interview not a contribution to the Joe Biden re-election campaign.
Of course, we only saw part of the interview but what came across was that Gov. DeSantis was unflappable, unfazed, and unrufflable. But if you go to youtube.com you can see the entire 36 minute interview where Gov. DeSantis articulately defended his position on a wide range of issues.
Abortion, as you expect, was prominent in her questioning.
When DeSantis signed Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act into law, the New York Times’s gloom and doom headline was “DeSantis Signs Six-Week Abortion Ban in Florida: The prohibition is among the most restrictive in the country, and Florida will no longer be a destination for women from across the Deep South seeking the procedure.”
Well…yes!
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“We are proud to support life and family in the state of Florida,” said Gov. DeSantis. “I applaud the Legislature for passing the Heartbeat Protection Act that expands pro-life protections and provides additional resources for young mothers and families.”
Burns asked DeSantis, “in terms of enforcement or limits on abortion, to what extend do you believe that women should be punished for violating an abortion ban?”
“Not at all,” he responded. “No, I don’t think this is an issue about the woman. I think a lot of these women, you know, are in very difficult circumstances. They don’t get any support from a lot of the fathers.”
The most testy exchange began when Burns refused to acknowledge that Democrats support abortion up until birth.
DeSantis: I would not allow what a lot of the left wants to do, which is to override pro-life protections throughout the country all the way up really until the moment of birth in some instances, which I think is infanticide.
Burns: Well, actually, I gotta push back on that because that’s a misrepresentation of what’s happening. I mean 1.3 percent of abortions happen at 21 weeks or higher, and there’s no evidence of Democrats pushing for abortions up until—
DeSantis: Their view is . . . that all the way up into that, that there should not be any legal protections.
Burns: There’s no indication of Democrats pushing for that ….
DeSantis: Yes they have, yes they have.
True? Or is it, as Burns described it, a “misrepresentation”? Of course it’s true. As John McCormack wrote, “But in fact, nearly every Democrat in Congress has voted for legislation that would effectively impose a nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy”– Women’s Health Protection Act. He adds
The relevant question then is whether Democrats think those abortions should be legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy, and the answer is an unequivocal “yes.”
Several Democratic senators — including John Fetterman, Bernie Sanders, and Ben Cardin — openly admit that they oppose any legal limits on abortion at any point in pregnancy, which is the position of a majority of Democratic voters.
There are some blue states, such as Colorado, that explicitly allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason.
McCormack also addresses Burns’ brutally dismissive comment:
First, Burns pointed to the fact that 1.3 percent of abortions happen at 21 weeks or later, but 1.3 percent of 930,000 total abortions still equals 12,000 unique human beings killed each year at 21 weeks or later, when babies are capable of feeling pain and sometimes capable of surviving outside of the womb. There are fewer than 12,000 total gun homicides in the United States each year. Burns, in an attempt to minimize the horror of late-term abortion, actually ended up agreeing that late-term abortions do in fact happen in the United States.
A great job by Gov. DeSantis to a pro-abortion attack masquerading as an interview.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
