For Tim Walz, Protecting Reproductive Freedom Means Minding ‘Your Own Damn Business’

On the third night of the Democratic National Convention, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said reproductive freedom is vital to the Harris-Walz presidential ticket.

As governor of Minnesota, Walz said he fought to protect reproductive freedom, because Minnesotans respect their neighbors’ personal choices. “And even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business. And that includes IVF [in vitro fertilization] and fertility treatments.”

“If you’ve never experienced the hell that is infertility, I guarantee you, you know somebody who has,” he added, describing the pit in his stomach each time the phone rang and the “absolute agony” of learning that a treatment had failed.

Both of Walz’s children were born with the help of intrauterine insemination. He said the reason he’s sharing his story publicly is because freedom is on the ballot this next election.

Last year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are the legal equivalent of children, which led IVF providers to pause their services until the state legislature passed a bill to protect them from liability.

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee, voted to block a bill to protect IVF, while also criticizing the “childless left,” claiming they don’t have a stake in the country’s future.

Preventing Gun Violence

“When Republicans use the word ‘freedom,’ they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office, corporations free to pollute your air and water, and banks free to take advantage of customers,” Walz said. “But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love, freedom to make your own healthcare decisions, and yeah, your kids, freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.”

While a veteran and a hunter, “I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe,” he noted.

In 2018, while campaigning for governor, Walz wrote an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune stating that he would no longer accept contributions from the National Rifle Association. In 2023, he signed a gun safety law that included background checks and a “red flag law,” a measure enabling law enforcement to seize firearms from anyone that a court deems dangerous to themselves or others.

“That’s what this is all about, the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other, and to the future that we’re building together in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want,” Walz said. “No matter who you are, Kamala Harris is going to stand up and fight for your freedom to live the life that you want to lead, because that’s what we want for ourselves, and it’s what we want for our neighbors.”

Project 2025

Walz then turned to his opponents, former President Donald Trump and Vance and what he argued is their Republican agenda: Project 2025.

In April 2022, Trump spoke about Project 2025 at a conference hosted by the Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded the project. “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” he said.

Since then, Trump has repeatedly sought to distance himself from Project 2025. “I have no idea who is behind it,” he said in a Facebook post in July. For his part, Vance wrote the foreword for an upcoming book authored by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

Walz argued, as a former football coach, that when someone draws up a playbook, they plan to use it.

If Trump and Vance are elected, they will raise costs for the middle class, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and “gut” Social Security and Medicare, he said.

“And they will ban abortion across this country, with or without Congress,” he added. “It’s an agenda nobody asked for. It’s an agenda that serves nobody except the richest and most extreme amongst us.”

Earlier in the evening, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) walked voters through the project’s playbook.

“Right here on page 562 it says that Donald Trump could use an obscure law from the 1800s to single-handedly ban abortion in all 50 states, even putting doctors in jail,” he said, referring to the 1873 Comstock Act, which bans the mailing of “obscene matter and articles used to produce abortion.”

“Page 455, Project 2025 says that states have to report miscarriages to the Trump administration,” Polis continued.

Indeed, the report states that to target “abortion tourism, HHS should … ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders,” and in what form, including spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and induced abortions.

On Wednesday night, television legend Oprah Winfrey applauded previous speakers at the convention who shared stories of personal choices they made, including Hadley Duvall, who was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant at 12 years old, as well as other women who experienced dangerous miscarriages.

The only reason to share such private tragedies is to make sure they don’t happen to someone else, Winfrey said. “Because if you do not have autonomy over this … if you cannot control when and how you choose to bring your children into this world and how they are raised and supported, there is no American dream.”

In his remarks, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) zeroed in on Harris’ plans.

“Kamala Harris and House Democrats will protect Social Security, protect Medicare, protect Medicaid, protect the Affordable Care Act, protect working families, protect small businesses, protect the middle class, protect our children, protect our seniors, protect our veterans, protect our unions, protect our Dreamers, and always protect a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive healthcare decisions,” he said.

Jeffries also likened Trump to an old boyfriend “spinning the block,” trying to get back together with America. “Bro, we broke up with you for a reason … there’s no reason for us to ever get back together.”

Washington Editor Joyce Frieden contributed to this story.

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