Governor Walz, in his first appearance on a Sunday news show, is defending his state’s no-limits abortion law, which he signed as governor while insisting that he and Vice President Harris want nothing more than the codification of Roe v. Wade at the federal level. He has faced criticism from anti-abortion rights advocates relentlessly for his signature on the no-limits law. 

“The restoration of Roe v. Wade is what we’re asking for,” he told Fox News’ Shannon Bream. 

“This puts the decision with the woman and her healthcare provider. The situation we have is, when you don’t have the ability of healthcare providers to provide that, that’s where you end with a situation like Amanda Zurawski in Texas,” the governor said, referring to a woman who suffered several medical complications including sepsis when she was denied an abortion because her fetus had a detectable heartbeat when she went to get an abortion. 

“It puts the decision back … to the woman, to the physicians,” he said. 

Mr. Walz claimed that President Trump would sign a national abortion ban, though the former president has explicitly said he would not sign such a law. The Minnesota governor insisted that Trump and his running mate are lying about their positions based on their past comments about the necessity of a national restriction on abortion rights. 

“Senator Vance has, in the past, said so,” Mr. Walz said of the national ban. “They may see this as an election issue. We see it as a right of women to make their own bodily decisions and that’s what the states — like my state — have the ability to put that in.”

Mr. Walz also brought up the case of Amanda Thurman, a Georgia woman who died in 2022 after taking an abortion pill and later seeking care for complications at a hospital. Her family has said that her care was delayed because physicians feared prosecution under the state’s six-week abortion ban, which contributed to the young mother’s death. 

Ms. Zurawski, Thurman’s family, and a young woman from Kentucky who became active in the abortion rights movement after being impregnated by her step-father at 12 years old, Hadley Duvall, have all been campaigning for Vice President Harris and Mr. Walz in battleground states. 
“Let’s be very clear: trying to cut hairs on this issue is not where the American public’s at. They want the restoration of Roe v. Wade. Vice President Harris said she would sign it. That’s what we’ll do,” Mr. Walz insisted.