When is a national ban not a national ban?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2024

Perhaps with a ban such as this: As we noted this morning, Candidate Vance still doesn't seem to know who won the last election.

This puzzling fact came to light during last evening's debate. Also, the candidate has been widely criticized for having made the highlighted statement in response to a question by Norah O'Donnell:

O'DONNELL (10/1/24): In the past, you have supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. In fact, you said if someone can't support legislation like that, quote, "You are making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world." 

My question is, why have you changed your position?

VANCE: Well, Norah, first of all, I never supported a national ban. ...

The candidate continued at length from there. Especially within Blue America, he has been savaged for saying that he never supported a federal / national ban.

Why did Vance issue such a denial? O'Donnell didn't challenge his denial—but if she had, what would Vance have said?

We can't answer that question. Nor are we experts on the full roster of Vance's past statements on this topic. We can riddle you this:

When is a federal or national ban on abortion not a federal or national ban on abortion? Possibly, when it's a federal or national ban on abortion "after fifteen weeks."

As Blue pundits frequently note, the vast majority of abortions take place within the first fifteen weeks. Our question:

If someone proposes a ban on abortions after that, has that person actually proposed "a ban on abortions," full stop?

Has that person proposed "a ban on abortions?" We'd be inclined to say no, with clarifications to follow. 

Is that what Vance would have said if his denial had been challenged? We don't have the slightest idea!

In our view, the moderators behaved like potted plants during most of the evening, probably due to the agreement by CBS News that they wouldn't perform any fact-checking. Perhaps for that reason, O'Donnell never went back and questioned what Vance said.

What did Candidate Vance mean by the denial in question? We don't have any way to know. If O'Donnell had followed up, we'd all be able to evaluate what the candidate said.

In his list of fact checks for the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler scores Vance "disingenuous" for this particular statement. In this instance, we think Kessler may have gotten a bit out over his skis.

For the record, Kessler lists many other plain misstatements by Vance. Also for the record, we humans don't reason with spectacular clarity, especially at highly polarized times such as these. 

At times like these, we humans tend to want what we want! As the great anthropologist Gene Brabender once observed:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

For extra credit only: We recommend Kessler's fact-check of Vance's statement about the 320,000 allegedly missing children.

That claim has been all over the Fox News Channel. Candidate Trump likes to make it.

Newspapers like the New York Times agree to avert their gaze. All too often, our rapidly failing "national discourse" no longer runs on facts.