Walz-Vance debate updates: VP candidates tangle on abortion, immigration and Jan. 6

Fact-check: [False.](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/sep/18/tony-perkins/no-legal-protections-for-born-alive-babies-in-some/)

Infanticide, the crime of killing a child within a year of its birth, is illegal in all U.S. states. In May 2023, Walz, as Minnesota governor, signed legislation updating a state law for "infants who are born alive." This change did not alter the fact that under state law, these babies are protected.

Previously, state law said, "All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to preserve the life and health of the born alive infant."

The law was updated to instead say medical personnel must "care for the infant who is born alive." The law's updated version also kept the provision that said, "An infant who is born alive shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law."

Every person who is born has legal protections under federal and state laws, experts told PolitiFact.

—PolitiFact's Sara Swann

Just before cameras started to roll for the next section of the debate, Walz entered the stage again with about 45 seconds to go.

Vance, though, cut it close and rushed back onstage right before the end of the break. As the stagehand announced, "10 seconds." He was smiling.

The two men smiled at each other as the break ended.

-ABC News' MayAlice Parks

Fact Check: False

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has repeatedly claimed he was in China during the Tiananmen Square, Beijing, protests during his year-long stint as a high school teacher in the southeastern Chinese town of Foshan starting in 1989.

Tonight he admitted that was false, saying he “misspoke” earlier, though he travelled to China in the months after the protests.

The school Walz taught at was near Hong Kong. He was there as part of the WorldTeach program, a nonprofit affiliated with Harvard University. But according to local newspaper clipping obtained by ABC News, it appears he did not actually travel to the country until August 1989,

The pro-democracy protests, which led to a deadly government crackdown by the Chinese government, lasted from April 15 to June 4, 1989 — ending about two months ahead of Walz’s travel to the country.

An article in the Chadron Record in Chadron, Nebraska dated August 11, 1989, said that Walz, a graduate of Chadron State College, “will leave Sunday enroute to China, where he will teach English and American history during the next year.”

Walz has spoken about Tiananmen Square repeatedly— why he supported the protests and why he stayed to be a witness.

As recently as in February, Walz said during an episode of the podcast “Pod Save America” that he was in Hong Kong during the protests. “I was in Hong Kong when it happened – I was in Hong Kong on June 4th when Tiananmen happened … Quite a few of our folks decided not to go in,” he said, further expanding on the experience. “There was a lot of Europeans in Hong Kong [saying] don't do this, don't go, don't support them in this, and my thinking at the time was … what a golden opportunity to go tell how it was. And I did have a lot of freedom to do that, taught American history and could tell the story.”

Walz, while serving in Congress as ranking member on the Executive Commission on China, said at a 2014 congressional hearing marking 25 years since the massacre that “as the events were unfolding, several of us went in.”

“I will talk a lot,” Walz said tonight. "I will get caught up in the rhetoric. But being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life. I learned a lot about China.”

—Isabella Murray & Justin Fishel

Walz referenced the death of Amber Thurman, one of two Georgia women featured in a recent ProPublica report whose deaths the publication said were a direct result of the state's six-week abortion ban, as the debate pivoted to reproductive rights.

"There's a young woman named Amber Thurman. She happened to be in Georgia, 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," Walz said. "The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography?"

"There's a very real chance at Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today," he continued.

Harris met with the family of Thurman last month while participating in a livestream event with Oprah Winfrey.

Vance said he agreed that Thurman should still be alive.

"I certainly wish that she was," he said.