Former President Donald Trump chose Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance, who opposed abortion rights and some LGBTQ+ rights while in political office, as his vice presidential running mate.
Vance, a 39-year-old Yale Law School graduate and former venture capitalist, entered the political arena with his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicled his childhood and upbringing shaped by poverty and addiction in southwestern Ohio and became a bestseller and a guide for many seeking to understand Trump voters.
Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022. By then, he had changed from a critic of Trump in the 2016 election to a robust Trump supporter, fully accepting Trump’s populist policies and positioning himself as an avant-garde ultra-conservative intellectual movement. He opposed abortion rights and some LGBTQ+ rights measures while supporting policies he believed would enhance the birth rate in the United States, such as making childbirth free and financially incentivizing couples to have children. Vance and his wife, Usha Vancea lawyer he met at Yale University, has three children.
Vance, who was a staunch opponent of abortion during his Senate campaign, in 2021 he compared abortion to slavery, has changed his public stance on the issue somewhat. Trump reportedly believed that an uncompromising stance on abortion was negative for a vice presidential candidate.
During the 2021 election campaign, Vance defended the lack of rape and incest exemptions in Texas’ abortion ban bill, known as SB 8, speaking in an interview that “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“The question is not whether a woman should be forced to give birth to a child, but whether the child should be allowed to live, even if the circumstances of its birth are in some way inconvenient or a problem for society,” he said.
But in a 2022 Senate debate, Vance said he supported “reasonable exceptions” to abortion bans. But he remained generally opposed to access, saying he would be “completely fine” with a “minimum national standard” for abortion laws. He also campaigned against Ohio Constitutional Amendment which guarantees the right to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care within the country. In the post on X, Vance called the amendment’s passage in November 2023 a “punch in the gut” and said conservatives need to regain trust on abortion, including by supporting exemptions.
“I am as pro-life as anyone else and want to save as many children as possible. This is not about moral legitimacy, but about political reality,” he wrote.
Vance praised Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orbán’s policies that encourage families to have children, and expressed support for the proposal to make childbirth free.
In June, Vance voted against the Democrat-backed bill to provide access to in vitro fertilization (IVF).
This month, in response to the Supreme Court ruling that was a defeat for anti-abortion activists, he cited Trump’s position. Vance said in July 7 interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press”“that he agreed” with the US Supreme Court ruling dismissing the case questioning the availability of mifepristone, an abortive drug.
“I think it’s important to say that we need to have a conversation in our country about what our abortion policy should be,” he said. “Donald Trump is a pragmatic leader here.”
In brief comments to reporters at Joint Base Andrews military base on Monday, President Joe Biden called Vance a “Trump clone on contentious issues.”
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s re-election campaign co-chair, told reporters on Monday that Vance “will do anything to enable Trump to advance his extreme MAGA agenda” and “wants to set women back decades.”
“As Trump and Vance now enter the general election, they are facing off against the Biden-Harris candidates, and I will definitely take that matchup any day of the week and twice on Sunday,” she said. “While Trump and Vance have an agenda focused on themselves and their wealthy donor friends, President Biden and Vice President Harris are fighting for the American people.”
Biden campaign officials also said Harris had accepted an invitation from CBS News to appear in the yet-to-be-scheduled vice presidential debate.
“The vice president will reach out to JD Vance,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said during a Monday conversation. “I’ve known her for 15 years, and she’s fought every issue on behalf of working families. And she’s strong. She knows what she’s talking about and she’s not giving up an inch.”
Vance has criticized Harris before, in comments aimed at prominent Democrats who do not have children, arguing that political leaders should have a stake in the country’s future through their children.
In July 2021 speech before a conservative think tank AND another interview for Fox Newscriticized the “childless left,” saying: “Why have we allowed the Democratic Party to be run by people who don’t have children?”
In both cases, Vance specifically targeted Harris, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Harris has two stepchildren, and Buttigieg and his husband Chasten welcomed twins in September 2021.
“This country is really run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs, childless cat women who are unhappy with their lives and the decisions they’ve made, so they want the rest of the country to be unhappy, too,” Vance said in an interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2021.
“If we want to have a healthy ruling class in this country, we should invest more, we should vote more, we should support people who actually have children because they are the ones who have a direct impact on the future of this country,” Vance added.
Vance also attacked economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, calling him “one of many weird cat women who have too much power in our country.” in a tweet from July 2021. and in Tweet from September 2021 he joked, “These cat people, man. They’ve got to be stopped.”
In June 2022, two days after the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights, wrote on Twitter: “If your worldview tells you that motherhood is bad for women but that working 90 hours a week in an office at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs is liberating for them, you’ve been fooled.”
While running for the Senate seat, Vance said he would vote against it this The Act on Respect for Marriage, a bipartisan bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and require states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Vance has also criticized gender-affirming care and in 2023 introduced legislation to criminalize certain forms of gender-affirming care for minors, including surgical procedures. 🔥
