Former President Donald Trump participated in an all-women Fox News town hall set in Cumming as he tries to boost his standing with women voters with just 20 days left till the election.
The town hall, which was recorded Tuesday and aired Wednesday, covered general topics like the economy and immigration, but Trump also fielded a couple of questions about an issue that has energized women voters: access to reproductive rights.
“This issue has torn this country apart for 52 years, so we got it back in the states. We have a vote of the people, and it’s working its way through the system, and ultimately, it’s going to be the right thing,” Trump said.
Georgia lawmakers passed a six-week ban on most abortions back in 2019 but the law did not take effect until 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion. Those restrictions are currently being challenged in court.
The question of abortion access has not been put on the ballot in Georgia.
During the town hall, Trump also referred to himself as “the father of IVF,” referring to in-vitro fertilization.
Early this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were minor children under an 1872 law, threatening access to IVF treatment. Alabama lawmakers passed protections for providers, but the court ruling was left unchallenged after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
“We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we’re totally in favor of it,” Trump said to the friendly crowd at the town hall.
Democrats immediately – and even preemptively – blasted Trump’s comments on reproductive rights.
“He tried to rewrite his terrible record on reproductive freedom,” Gwen Walz, the first lady of Minnesota and the spouse of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, said at an event in Cobb County Wednesday.
“In fact – and I can hardly believe this – he called himself ‘the father of IVF,’” she said. “I would say more like ‘the father of Georgia’s abortion ban.’”
She also blamed congressional Republicans for the failed attempts to safeguard access to IVF nationally in the wake of the Alabama ruling.
“On every score, ‘the father of IVF’ isn’t just creepy. It’s downright nuts,” she said.
The Walzes have been open about their own fertility journey. They conceived via intrauterine insemination, which is less common than IVF and involves injecting sperm into the uterus during or just before ovulation to increase the chances of fertilization and pregnancy.
Gwen Walz told reporters Wednesday that she found Trump’s comments about IVF “offensive” and “out of touch with reality.”
The Harris-Walz campaign also released a new ad Wednesday that features the family of a 28-year-old Georgia woman named Amber Nicole Thurman who died trying to have an abortion shortly after the state’s six-week ban took effect. The doctors waited 20 hours to perform a dilation and curettage, or D&C, to treat sepsis that resulted from an incomplete abortion.
“My daughter is gone because of what Donald Trump did,” Thurman’s mother, Shanette Williams, says in the ad, referring to Trump’s role in appointing the conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Thurman’s family also participated in an emotional press conference on Tuesday with prominent Georgia Democrats that was called in response to Trump’s planned town hall.
“He bragged that he’s the one who overturned Roe v. Wade,” said Georgia U.S. Sen Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who participated in that press conference. “We ought to give him full credit for that, and we ought to make him pay for it at the polls.”
The town hall represents an attempt to overcome the gender gap that has emerged in polling. A recent Emerson College poll found that Harris is leading Trump with women in every swing state except Arizona.
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is stepping up its appeals to Black voters as polling shows lagging support compared to 2020. Harris is trailing President Joe Biden’s support by about 10 percentage points overall and by about 15 percentage points with Black men, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.
Warnock rejected the idea of Black men supporting Trump in any significant numbers. But he conceded that there is a concern that Black men may sit this election out.
“I don’t buy this idea that there will be huge swaths of Black men voting for Donald Trump. That’s not going to happen,” Warnock said.
“They’re not going to vote for Donald Trump. Not in any large numbers. There’ll be some. We’re not a monolith. But the issue is folks have got to understand that to not vote is a vote. It’s a vote for Donald Trump,” he added.
This story was provided by WABE content partner Georgia Recorder.
