JD Vance on Abortion

Donald Trump's trad-husband VP pick wants women back in the kitchen

Donald Trump has chosen U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, anti-abortion loser galore, as his running mate. It’s an interesting choice, one that indicates that maybe Trump isn’t as worried about abortion as he should be.

Because while we’ve heard for months that Trump wanted a vice presidential candidate who appeared moderate on abortion rights, that is most definitely not Vance—who calls abortion “the first political issue” he ever cared about.

But Vance isn’t just your run-of-the-mill anti-abortion Republican: he’s a full-on trad husband, obsessed with forcing women in the home and calling anyone who disagrees “childless cat ladies.” A hundred dollars says he has Harrison Butker on speed dial.

Remember, this is a guy who opined for 1950s marriages and encouraged women to stay in abusive marriages. Seriously:

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.”

In short, Vance’s anti-abortion beliefs are driven by a broader desire for traditional gender norms and a world where women didn’t have choices about anything, not just their bodies. Like so many men obsessed with the ‘trad’ movement, however, Vance shrouds his old-school misogyny as concern for women’s happiness—or even a way to buck against capitalism:

“If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”

We’ve seen similar messaging from conservative influencers eager to convince women to stay at home, insisting that real freedom and feminism comes from opting out of the public sphere.

If you don’t want to opt-out, Vance’s policies will force you out: The new VP candidate not only supports a federal abortion ban, but opposes rape and incest exceptions. When he was asked about abortion access for sexual violence in a 2021 interview, Vance replied that “two wrong don’t make a right.”

“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term; it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient.”

I’d love for Vance to tell a 13 year-old girl who has been impregnated by her father that it’s simply “inconvenient.”

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Vance has also compared abortion to slavery in an absolutely wild interview where he complained that people see children as “inconveniences to be discarded instead of blessings to cherish.” (Something tells me he’d feel differently if those blessings were being cherished in his body against his will.)

All that said, Vance knows that his extremism won’t land well with most voters—that’s why he’s been burying it in Republican-approved rhetoric. Instead of calling a national ban a ‘ban’, for example, Vance says he supports a “minimum national standard.” If you’re a regular reader, you know what that term means.

And over the last few weeks, Vance has been feigning moderation in interviews in a shameless attempt to show Trump he can toe the line. Most recently he lied to “Meet the Press” about supporting abortion medication.

Anti-abortion groups used the same softened language when responding to Trump’s nomination: President of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Marjorie Dannenfeser lauded Vance’s “compassionate approach” to abortion.

The truth is that Trump doesn’t care if Vance is actually ‘reasonable’ on abortion (whatever that means), he just needs him to appear that way. Vance’s anti-choice bonafides are actually quite helpful to the disgraced former president with his conservative base. As Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju said today in response to the news, “Make no mistake, Trump picked him because of—not in spite of—his anti-abortion bonafides.

A note from Jessica:

I’ll be reporting on the media response to Vance’s nomination in the daily report today, but I had to flag this absolutely wild lie from The New York Times as soon as possible. The Times reported yesterday that Vance opposes a national ban, quoting from this 2022 interview as evidence: “Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable.”

But let’s look at the full quote and what Vance actually said:

Let’s be serious; this is journalistic malpractice. The Times has deceptively edited a quote to make it appear as if Vance opposes a national ban, even though the full quote is a literal call for federal legislation. I don’t even know what to say anymore.

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