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‘Restore the Sanctity of Life’: Pence Supports Forcing Women to Carry Non-Viable Fetuses to Term
Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence supports forcing women whose fetuses have zero chance of survival to carry them to term – in other words, to literally carry a fetus inside them that will not survive after birth, or might be born dead. The former Trump vice president claims he’s heard many stories of women who were told they would give birth to a baby that could not survive, but did.
“I just have heard so many stories over the years of courageous women and families who were told that their unborn child would not go to term or would not survive. And then they had a healthy pregnancy and a healthy delivery,” Pence told the Associated Press in an interview published Wednesday.
“I’m pro-life. I don’t apologize for it,” said Pence, an evangelical Christian who, in talking about abortion once said, “my faith informs my life.”
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“I want to always err on the side of life,” Pence also told the AP. “I would hold that view in these matters because … I honestly believe that we got this extraordinary opportunity in the country today to restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.”
The AP says Pence’s “standard would force women to carry pregnancies to term even when doctors have determined there is no chance a baby will survive outside the womb.”
Pence is the only major candidate to support a six-week ban on abortion, which is often before many women even know they are pregnant. He has urged his fellow GOP presidential candidates to formally embrace at least a 15-week ban. And he “advocated pulling from the market a widely used abortion pill that has a better safety record than penicillin and Viagra.”
“Doctors disputed Pence’s characterization, saying there are conditions that are always incompatible with life and others where the chance of survival is so slim that most patients, when previously given the choice, concluded that continuing the pregnancy wasn’t worth the suffering, grief or risk,” The AP reports.
Pence’s comments “drew alarms from obstetricians and doctors who specialize in high-risk pregnancies and say nonviable pregnancies are far more common than people realize. They range from ectopic pregnancies, when an embryo implants somewhere other than the uterus, to deadly birth defects and other severe pregnancy complications.”
“Banning abortions in these cases, doctors say, leads to outcomes that are both cruel and put women’s lives and mental health at risk,” the AP adds.
“Pence does say he has ‘always supported’ exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, though he told an Indiana anti-abortion group in 2010 that he believed, ‘Abortion should never be legal,’ and later that it should only be legal to save the ‘life of the mother.'”
There are a number of fetal conditions in which doctors generally agree there is “truly zero probability for a healthy outcome,” including anencephaly, a severe neural tube defect in which the skull doesn’t form and the brain is exposed.
Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine spokesperson David Hackney, who is also a high-risk obstetrician, told the AP that in the case of fetal conditions like anencephaly, there is “truly zero probability for a healthy outcome.” Anencephaly, according to the AP, is “a severe neural tube defect in which the skull doesn’t form and the brain is exposed.”
“The chances of survival are absolute zero … no matter what Mike Pence says,” Dr. Hackney said, adding that “it feels absurd” for people to be “forced against their will to carry pregnancies to term.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, numerous reports were published exposing state abortion bans forcing women to carry non-viable fetuses to term, which Pence’s policy would support.
“An expectant Louisiana woman who was carrying a skull-less fetus that would die within a short time from birth ultimately traveled about 1,400 miles to New York City to terminate her pregnancy after her local hospital denied her an abortion amid uncertainty over the procedure’s legality,” The Guardian reported last September.
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A Texas woman was told her “fetus did not have a heartbeat and she no longer had a viable pregnancy,” The Washington Post reported last year in July. She “asked her doctor to perform a dilation and curettage, or D and C — a standard procedure to remove the fetus following a miscarriage to help prevent infection or long-term health problems.”
But “because the procedure is also used during abortions, which a Texas law had greatly restricted, the doctor did not want to perform a D and C.” The woman, Marlena Stell, “would be forced to carry her dead fetus for two weeks before she could find a provider to give her the medical intervention that physicians had denied her.”
Also in Texas, “Kylie Beaton was looking forward to having her second child later this year. Now, she’s faced with carrying an unviable pregnancy to its end due to Texas’ highly restrictive abortion ban,” ABC 7 reported in March. “According to a report from her doctor, Beaton’s baby has a rare, severe condition impacting the development of its brain, but she is unable to access abortion care in her home state.”
In April at the right-wing Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, Pence avoided giving a straight answer when asked if, as president, he would support a national ban on abortion.
“I would tell you that if I was in the Congress of the United States I would certainly support any pro-life legislation.” And while he said he believes ultimately each state will decide whether or not to ban abortion, “I don’t agree with the former president who says this is a ‘states-only’ issue.”
Pence is an evangelical Christian, “for whom the issue is deeply personal,” says the AP, adding that he “argues restricting abortion is ‘more important than politics’ and calls it the ’cause of our time.'”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
