Have you ever looked after toddlers who insist on showing you everything they have done—terrible stick-figure drawings, what they’ve left in the potty—and demand that you admire it? If you have, then you’ve experienced something very similar to Donald Trump’s performance at a Fox News town hall yesterday in Cumming, Georgia, with an all-female audience. “FEMA was so good with me,” he said at one point. “I defeated ISIS,” he added later. “I’m the father of IVF,” he claimed, with no further explanation.

The former president set a boastful tone early. The Fox News moderator, Harris Faulkner, told Trump that the Democrats were so worried about the town hall that the party had staged a “prebuttal” to the event, featuring Georgia’s two Democratic senators and the family of Amber Thurman, who died after having to leave the state to access abortion care. “We’ll get better ratings, I promise,” Trump replied, smirking. (Finally, someone willing to tell grief-stricken relatives to jazz it up a little.)

This event was supposed to involve Trump reaching beyond his comfort zone, after he had spent the past few weeks shoring up his advantage with men by embarking on a tour of bro podcasts. But these women were extremely friendly—suspiciously so. CNN later reported that Republican women’s groups had packed it with Trump supporters. Still, even in this gentle setting, the former president blustered, evaded questions, and contradicted himself.  

[Read: The women Trump is winning]

This election cycle has been dominated by podcast interviews with softball questions, but the Fox town hall reveals that the Trump campaign still believes that the legacy media can impart a useful sheen of gravitas, objectivity, and trustworthiness. If a candidate can get that without actually facing tough questions or a hostile audience, then so much the better. Why complain about “fake news” when you can make it? Thanks to Fox, Trump could court female voters without the risk of encountering any “nasty women”—or revealing his alienating, chauvinist side. (Fox did not respond to CNN’s questions about the event.)

This has been called the “boys vs. girls election”: Kamala Harris leads significantly among women, and Trump among men; in the final stretch of the campaign, though, each is conspicuously trying to reach the other half of the electorate. Hence Harris’s decision to release an “opportunity agenda for Black men”—including business loans, crypto protections, and the legalization of marijuana—and talk to male-focused outlets such as All the Smoke, Roland Martin Unfiltered, The Shade Room, and Charlamagne Tha God’s radio program.

For Trump, the main strategic aim of the Georgia town hall was surely to reverse out of his party’s unpopular positions on abortion and IVF. The former drew the most pointed question. “Women are entitled to do what they want to and need to do with their bodies, including their unborn—that’s on them,” a woman who identified herself as Pamela from Cumming asked. “Why is the government involved in women’s basic rights?”

This was the only time the former president made an attempt at being statesmanlike, focusing on the topic at hand rather than his personal grievances or dire warnings about immigration. The subject had been rightfully returned to the states, Trump maintained, and many had liberalized their regimes thanks to specific legislation and ballot measures. Some of the anti-abortion laws enacted elsewhere, he allowed, were “too tough, too tough.” He personally believed in exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. This unusual clarity suggests that his strategists have hammered into him that the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has repelled swing voters. He took credit, though in a peculiar way, for saving IVF in Alabama after that state’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos should be regarded as children. In his telling, he was alerted to the situation by Senator Katie Britt, whom he described as “a young—just a fantastically attractive person—from Alabama.” He put out a statement supporting IVF, and the legislature acted quickly to protect it. “We really are the party for IVF,” he added. “We want fertilization.”

[Read: The people waiting for the end of IVF]

Others dispute Trump’s account, and his claims to moderation on reproductive issues yesterday weren’t entirely convincing. (Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump term that was compiled by many of his allies, calls for a raft of restrictions on abortion.) But at least it was something close to a direct answer. The first questioner, Lisa from Milton—whom CNN later identified as the president of Fulton County Republican Women—asked Trump about the economy. She got the briefest mention of the “liquid gold” underneath America, which will allegedly solve its economic problems. Then Trump segued into musing about his “favorite graph”—the one on illegal immigration that supposedly saved his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.

To give Faulkner some credit, she did try to return the conversation to reality at several points, with vibe-killing questions such as “And we can pay for that?” (That was in response to Trump’s suggestion that he would cut tax on benefits for seniors. Trump sailed on without acknowledging it.) He told Linda, also from Milton, that transgender women competing in female sports was “crazy,” ruefully shaking his head. “We’re not going to let it happen,” he added.

“How do you stop it?” Faulkner asked. “Do you go to the sports leagues?”

Nothing so complicated! “You just ban it,” he said. “The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen.” Now, the U.S. commander in chief might oversee the world’s biggest military and its largest economy, but he or she is not currently charged with setting the rules of Olympic boxing.

Next up was a single mom, Rachel, struggling with the cost of daycare. She was visibly emotional as she stood at the mic. “You have a beautiful voice, by the way,” Trump said, to put her at ease. In response to Rachel’s question about how her child tax credit had decreased, he mentioned his daughter Ivanka, who, he said “drove me crazy” about the issue. “She said, Dad, we have to do tax credits for women. The child tax credits. She was driving me crazy.” (Typical woman, always banging on about economic freedom this and reproductive rights that.) “Then I did it, and I got it just about done, and she said: Dad, you’ve got to double it up.” He noted that fellow Republicans had told him he would get no gratitude for this, and then promised Rachel that he would “readjust things.”

[Read: Trump called Harris ‘beautiful.’ Now he has a problem.]

Audience members seemed not to mind that there was only the vaguest relationship between many of their questions and the former president’s eventual answers. (Contrast that with Bloomberg News’s interview the day before, in which the editor in chief, John Micklethwait, rebuked Trump for referring to “Gavin Newscum” and dragged him back from a riff about voter fraud with the interjection: “The question is about Google.”) Some solid objects did appear through the mist, however. Trump promised an end to “sanctuary cities” and a 50 percent reduction in everyone’s energy bills, and he defended his “enemies from within” comments as a “pretty good presentation.”

Much like a toddler, Trump occasionally said something insightful in a naive and entirely unselfconscious manner. Talking about Aurora, Colorado, where he and his running mate, J. D. Vance, have claimed that Venezuelan gangs are running rampant—a claim that the city’s mayor has called “grossly exaggerated”—a brief cloud of empathy passed across the former president’s face. “They’ve taken over apartment buildings,” he said. “They’re in the real-estate business, just like I am.” (So true: The industry does attract some unsavory characters.) Later, talking about the number of court cases filed against him, Trump observed, “They do phony investigations. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone.” Sorry? Had someone left a pot of glue open near the stage? Did the former president really just compare himself to a big-time criminal who was notoriously convicted only of his smaller offenses?

And then, all too soon, the allotted hour was up. Fox, according to CNN, edited out at least one questioner’s enthusiastic endorsement of Trump. Even so, it was obvious that the ex-president’s many partisans at the event enjoyed themselves. Before asking about foreign policy, the last questioner, Alicia from Fulton County, thanked Trump for coming into “a roomful of women that the current administration would consider domestic terrorists.” (“That’s true,” he replied.) But had undecided women watching at home learned anything more about Trump that might inform their vote? No. Did they at least have a good time? Probably not.

Donald Trump’s recent comments on abortion have been evasive and contradictory. He takes credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, but says his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” He first refused to commit to vetoing a national abortion ban, but later said he would. He criticized Florida’s six-week ban as too early, but only a day later said that he would vote against a ballot measure there that would expand abortion rights.

He has, however, been consistent on one position: his opposition to what he calls abortion “after birth,” something he claims his Democratic rivals support. For example, at the September presidential debate, he declared that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, support the “execution” of babies after they are born. Trump brought up Democratic support for “execution of a baby after birth” again in an X post later that month.

As a debate moderator noted, killing a baby after birth is illegal in all states. What Trump appears to have in mind, and to be disparaging, is perinatal palliative care (PPC)—a crucial medical service aimed at improving quality of life for women and their babies after a severe fetal diagnosis or extreme prematurity. Established ethics guidelines govern who is eligible based on the specifics of a diagnosis, a baby’s chance for survival, and what complications the baby is likely to suffer. PPC can begin at diagnosis during pregnancy, and include standard prenatal care in addition to psychological, emotional, and mental-health support for the parents. If the baby is born alive, the care continues until the infant’s death.

The thing to understand about perinatal palliative care is that no health-care provider or parent ends the baby’s life before or after birth. It’s not an execution, regardless of Trump’s claims. Parents who choose perinatal palliative care are choosing to forgo life-extending interventions, which can inflict or extend their child’s suffering, seeking instead to maximize quality of life for their child when survival is impossible or unlikely.

[Emma Camp: Yes, third-trimester abortions are happening in America]

The bitter irony of Trump’s attacks is that anti-abortion advocates have long pushed PPC as the alternative to abortion for such pregnancies. For instance, Americans United for Life created a policy guide and model legislation called the Perinatal Hospice Information Act in 2018. Following that model legislation, numerous states passed laws requiring abortion seekers to be notified of options for perinatal palliative care before they could receive an abortion. These laws essentially advertised PPC as protecting women because, proponents argued, PPC is less psychologically damaging than abortion. An anti-abortion advocate told a local newspaper in Missouri that “the grieving process is actually better for the woman by actually going ahead and giving birth,” rather than having an abortion. (Research suggests that the psychological outcomes and feelings of regret are the same.)

With PPC available as an option, some anti-abortion leaders shamed women for choosing abortion. For instance, Pope Francis blamed a “culture of rejection” that labels children as “incompatible with life” when they should really be “welcomed, loved, and nurtured.” Perinatal palliative care became the answer for what “good” mothers do when faced with such a diagnosis: not “forsake the child but allow the little one to feel human warmth and love,” and appreciate the “gift of time” with their baby first during pregnancy and later when he or she dies.

That sentiment was on display late last year when Kate Cox sued Texas, seeking a declaration that the state abortion ban’s life-of-the-mother exception applied to her. Cox’s baby had a fatal condition known as Trisomy 18; continuing the pregnancy could have destroyed her chances at having another living child, because of her health risks and prior Cesarean sections. But the Texas Supreme Court rejected her claim, and Cox left the state to obtain abortion care. Texas Right to Life, a prominent anti-abortion group, disparaged Cox’s lawsuit, saying that her child was “uniquely precious” and that the “compassionate approach to these heartbreaking diagnoses is perinatal palliative care, which honors, rather than ends, the child’s life.”

In the post-Dobbs era, most states that had once used PPC as a tool to dissuade women from abortion don’t need to do so anymore; those states have banned abortion. Most states with abortion bans lack an exception for fetal anomalies, and when such an exception exists, it is only for a tiny subset of diagnoses. Thus, people in these states are now being forced to continue their pregnancies, enduring the risks and burdens of pregnancy only to watch their child die.

This means that the need for perinatal palliative care is growing dramatically. A recent study found a 13 percent rise in infant mortality in Texas in 2022, after its six-week abortion ban went into effect in late 2021. (The rest of the country saw a 2 percent increase during that same period.) The biggest jump was in infant deaths due to congenital abnormalities, which rose by nearly a quarter. But many of the states that have restricted abortion have done little or nothing to expand access to PPC for those desiring it. And now that state abortion bans have eliminated the need to pressure families to not choose abortion, the anti-abortion movement may be rethinking its support for palliative care.

[Read: Abortion isn’t about feminism]

Trump, for his part, portrays perinatal palliative care as something callous and murderous. As he put it at a 2019 rally, “The baby is born and you wrap the baby beautifully and you talk to the mother about the possible execution of the baby.” At least according to Trump, parents who choose perinatal palliative care are killing their child, acting just as reprehensibly, in his view, as someone who chooses an abortion.

Trump’s comments make clear that in the post-Dobbs world, there is no right answer for pregnant people facing a devastating fetal anomaly. A mother, apparently, should not only put her body on the line to grow and birth a child who will die in her arms, but force that child into aggressive interventions that may only cause and prolong the child’s suffering.

The most empowering solution for families in such a situation is to provide them with accurate, neutral, and comprehensive counseling regarding their options—abortion, perinatal palliative care, and life-prolonging care. Each path can be justified by a parent’s compassion and love, and each has been chosen by good parents, doing the best they can for their families in an incredibly difficult situation. Donald Trump’s decision to use his platform to stigmatize and berate families in crisis shows how deeply he misunderstands the issue—and, more appalling, his failure to muster any compassion at all for the people living through it.