In an emotional back-and-forth on the issue of abortion during Tuesday night's vice presidential debate, vice presidential hopeful Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz asked how can we as a nation "say that your life, and the right to control your own body, is determined on geography?"
Walz posed the question in response to Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio arguing that abortion should be decided at the state level.
"Let me tell you about this idea that there's diverse states," Walz said. "There's a young woman named Amber Thurman. She happened to be in Georgia in a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth.
"There's a very real chance had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today," he said.
Vance said he agreed with Walz that Thurman should still be alive.
"And I certainly wish she was," he said, before questioning the law in Minnesota that Walz helped pass.
"And maybe you're free to disagree with me on this and explain this to me. But as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late term abortion. Pro-choice or pro-abortion, that is fundamentally barbaric," he said.
Vance conceded that his party "needs to do a better job at winning back people's trust" on the issue of abortion.
"Donald Trump and I are committed to pursuing pro-family policies, making child care more accessible, making fertility treatments more accessible, because we've got to do a better job at that, and that's what real leadership is," he said.