Disgraced former senator and Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken (D) claimed in a social media post during Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate that “no one is trying to allow abortion right up to birth” — an attempt to rebuke Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said during the broadcast that Democrats want “to allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth.”
In fact, many prominent Democrats have pushed for abortion until the moment of birth, and several Democrat-run states have no limits on abortion, including Colorado and Oregon.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, for example, voted during his tenure in the House of Representatives in 2013 and 2015 against legislation that would ban abortion at five months into pregnancy. In 2015, he voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which aimed to protect children born alive during an abortion.
Former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, to name another example, gave a now-infamous interview in 2019 during which he responded to a question about women requesting an abortion at the moment of childbirth: “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Northam later said he had “no regrets” about his comment.
Franken resigned from the Senate in disgrace in 2017 following multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.