Arizona Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs refused to support any time limit at all on abortion, suggesting Sunday that women should be free to have an abortion at any time during pregnancy.
“I don’t support the 15-week ban,” Hobbs said during her appearance on CBS News’ Face the Nation, adding that Lake has “gone on the record saying she supports Arizona’s complete abortion ban,” a reference to the lifting of an injunction by Pima County Superior Court in September that had blocked enforcement of a ban on abortion except to save the life of the mother.
FULL INTERVIEW: Democratic AZ gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs explained her decision to decline to debate her opponent Kari Lake, saying it will become a "circus." She also shared her stance on abortion and criticized "decades of inaction in Washington" to tackle immigration. pic.twitter.com/Y5zehM9hnI
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 10, 2022
“Under a Kari Lake administration, we would have government-mandated forced births that risk women’s lives,” Hobbs said.
Asked by host Major Garrett what her limit would be for abortion access, Hobbs responded, “Look, abortion is a very personal decision that belongs between a woman and her doctor. The government and politicians don’t belong in that decision, we need to let doctors perform the care that they are trained and take an oath to – to perform.”
“So, if an Arizona voter were to conclude from your previous answer, that you do not favor any specific week limit on abortion, would they be correct?” Garrett pressed.
“I support leaving the decision between a woman and her doctor and leaving politicians entirely out of it,” Hobbs said.
However, former Planned Parenthood Director-turned pro-life activist Abby Johnson told The Star News Network how that decision-making process between a pregnant woman and an abortion doctor actually goes.
“Americans need to understand that abortion doctors do not spend a lot of time with patients before committing abortions,” said Johnson, the founder of And Then There Were None, a ministry that helps abortion workers leave the industry.
“Often, they don’t even speak to the patient and the patient doesn’t even know the name of their doctor,” she explained. “They are there to do abortions as fast and as efficiently as possible.”
“To say that abortion should be a decision between a ‘woman and her doctor’ is a complete copout,” Johnson asserted. “What that really means is advocating support for ending the life of a child for any reason at any point in pregnancy, something that a vast majority of Americans don’t agree with.”
Hobbs further accused Lake of “entirely misconstruing my position on this issue.”
“You and I both know that late-term abortion is extremely rare,” the Democrat told Garrett. “And if it’s being talked about, it’s because something has gone incredibly wrong in a pregnancy. A doctor’s not going to perform an abortion late in a pregnancy just because somebody decided they want one. That is ridiculous.”
But Hobbs was repeating the same already-debunked claim made in September by Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and other Democrats before her, that late-term abortion is “extremely rare,” and only occurs in cases of serious problems in a pregnancy.
"The majority of these procedures [late-term abortions] are performed… on healthy women and healthy fetuses." – Ron Fitzsimmons, Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers https://t.co/S8IiG32gr9
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) February 6, 2019
Prominent abortionists themselves have admitted late-term abortions are not rare at all, and, in 2013, abortion advocacy group the Guttmacher Institute released a study that found women seeking both first-trimester and late-term abortions provided the same reasons for delaying the procedure, including “not knowing about the pregnancy,” “trouble deciding about the abortion,” and “disagreeing about the abortion with the man involved.”
The study’s researchers concluded that “most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kari Lake” by Face the Nation.
