President Donald Trump has picked Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to be his running mate — and, in doing so, has chosen someone who believes people simply need to reframe the way they think about forcing women to stay pregnant because it’s “about the baby.”
In a 2021 interview with Spectrum News, Vance was asked if he believes a woman should be forced to carry a baby to term after she has been a victim of rape or incest.
The Ohio Republican suggested the framing of the question was flawed.
“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 or a problem to the society,” Vance said. “The question really, to me, is about the baby.”
The vice presidential nominee hasn’t been shy about his strong anti-abortion views. He has an A+ rating on SBA Pro-Life America’s pro-life scorecard of lawmakers. In the same 2021 Spectrum interview, Vance said he doesn’t think abortion laws should allow for exceptions for rape and incest because, he said, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
But for all the extreme anti-abortion rhetoric being thrown around by Republicans as election season picks up, Vance’s 2021 comments still manage to stand out, even if they’ve gotten a bit buried.
Vance is simply saying the quiet part out loud — that women are non-entities — that plenty of other anti-abortion Republicans agree with but are delicately trying to dance around.
Joe Raedle via Getty Images
Abortion rights has been a driving force in elections all over the country ever since the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Voters have consistently turned out in droves for Democrats’ pro-choice message, and President Joe Biden is hoping to channel people’s anger and fear over GOP attacks on abortion rights into votes in November. He has vowed to restore Roe v. Wade in a second term, and regularly touts his support for women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.
Vance’s particularly hardline opposition to abortion is definitely not the message the Trump campaign wants to be associated with right now, as it tries to soften its tone on abortion rights to win over votes from suburban women.
As recently as Monday evening, Vance’s Senate website spelled out his views on abortion under the all-caps title, “END ABORTION.”
“I am 100 percent pro-life, and believe that abortion has turned our society into a place where we see children as an inconvenience to be thrown away rather than a blessing to be nurtured,” read this section on Vance’s website.
By Tuesday afternoon, the abortion language was gone from Vance’s website.
A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A Senate spokesperson for Vance also did not respond to a request for comment.