During Tuesday night’s debate, Senator JD Vance agreed with his opponent, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that a woman who died in 2022 from abortion complications due to Georgia’s draconian abortion ban should still be alive.

“Governor, I agree with you,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said. “Amber Thurman should still be alive – and there are a lot of people who should still be alive – and I certainly wish she was.”

Vance’s acknowledgment that Thurmans was dead and his stated desire for the Republican Party to “regain the people’s trust” on the issue of abortion is inconsistent with Republican lawmakers who actively limit people’s ability to make such choices for themselves. After the debate, Thurman’s family released a statement condemning the Republican Party for “attempting to further restrict women’s access to necessary health care under the false guise of protection.”

“Amber’s tragic death was a direct result of Georgia’s archaic and dangerously restrictive abortion laws, which denied her the lifesaving care she so desperately needed,” Thurman’s family said. “We mourn an unimaginable loss that no family should have to endure.”

In the debate, Vance said the American people “simply don’t trust” Republicans when it comes to abortion, and that he wanted the Republican Party to become “pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.” He also claimed that he had done so has never supported a federal abortion ban (Vance, however, did not say until 2022 that he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally”) and defended overturning Roe v. Wade.

After lamenting Thurman’s death, Vance immediately spoke of “partial birth abortion,” a highly misleading political term referring to an abortion that occurs later in pregnancy. He also claimed that allowing states to impose their own abortion laws is the right thing to do, despite this being the exact circumstance that led to Thurman’s death.