Ben Johnson   September 11, 2024

Ben Johnson@TheRightsWriter

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

Presidential debates have often been compared to professional wrestling matches, but the ABC News debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris more closely resembled a handicap match, with Trump taking on three opponents at once: Harris and both moderators.

As “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis regularly fact-checked Trump in real time, they allowed Harris to get by with numerous evasions and false statements on such issues as late-term abortions, post-birth executions, government pregnancy monitors, the economy, and haggard canards about “very fine people” at Charlottesville.

Here are a few of Harris’ misstatements that the ABC News moderators let her get away with.

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1. Late-Term Abortion Is a Myth?

Harris attempted to deny Trump’s charge that the Democratic Party supports late-term abortion by denying such abortions take place. “Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris dodged.

In reality, 21 states allow abortion until birth: Six states have no legal limit protecting unborn children, and the rest allow abortion after the point of viability thanks to a vague and expansive “health of the mother” exception.

Late-term abortions are well-documented. In 2022, pro-life advocates found the remains of five babies whom abortionist Cesare Santangelo aborted late in their term or possibly after birth at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C. The Biden-Harris Justice Department advised the District of Columbia to destroy the evidence.

“In 2013, New Mexico abortionist Shelley Sella faced medical board sanctions after she committed an abortion on a child at 35 weeks,” reports Carole Novielli of Live Action. “In 2003, abortionist Charles Rossmann gave abortion pills to a woman who was past 30 weeks.” Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque’s website advertised that “abortion services are available through 32 weeks. Exceptions after 32 weeks are provided on a case-by-case basis.”

A 1981 Philadelphia Inquirer article documented that, in abortion facilities, “unintended live births are literally an everyday occurrence,” but they are “hushed up” instead of treated as “a problem to be solved.”

More than 56,000 abortions took place after 21 weeks, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

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The Powergrab of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Philipp Kruse – Nederlandse Ondertiteling

Disparate Impact Thinking Is Destroying Our Civilization

Heather Mac Donald

Manhattan Institute

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She earned a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She writes for several newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The New Criterion, and is the author of several books, including The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe and When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on February 15, 2024, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Florida.

The most consequential falsehood in American public policy today is the idea that any racial disparity in any institution is by definition the result of racial discrimination.

If a cancer research lab, for example, does not have 13 percent black oncologists—the black share of the national population—it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against competitively qualified black oncologists; if an airline company doesn’t have 13 percent black pilots, it is by definition a racist airline company that discriminates against competitively qualified black pilots; and if a prison population contains more than 13 percent black prisoners, our law enforcement system is racist.

The claim that racial disparities are proof of racial discrimination has been percolating in academia and the media for a long time. After the George Floyd race riots of 2020, however, it was adopted by America’s most elite institutions, from big law and big business to big finance. Even museums and orchestras took up the cry.

Many thought that STEM—the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—would escape the diversity sledgehammer. They were wrong. The American Medical Association today insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy. Nature magazine declares that science manifests one of “humankind’s worst excesses”: racism. The Smithsonian Institution announces that “emphasis on the scientific method” and an interest in “cause and effect relationships” are part of totalitarian whiteness.

As a result of this falsehood, we are eviscerating meritocratic and behavioral standards in accordance with what is known as “disparate impact analysis.”

Consider medicine. Step One of the medical licensing exam, taken during or after the second year of medical school, tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the grading curve, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step One, in other words, has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The solution, implemented last year, was to eliminate the Step One grading disparity by instituting a pass–fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low achieving students—and that is precisely the point!

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