Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), right, has railed against abortion, divorce, and people who don't want to have children. Now, he's Trump's running mate.Mother Jones; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty
After former President Trump announced on Monday that he had picked Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, anti-abortion advocates appear to be celebrating—and they have good reason to.
Vance has a staunchly anti-abortion record. He said he would support a nationwide 15-week abortion ban back when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a bill seeking to do just that in 2022. He has also argued against rape and incest exceptions, saying, “I think two wrongs don’t make a right,” before dismissing pregnancies that result from those traumas as “inconveniences.”
“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to carry a child to term,” he said in outlining that view while campaigning for the Senate in Sept. 2021, “it’s whether a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstance of a child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.”
In that same interview, Vance also appeared to signal support for fetal personhood—a long-running goal for the right that seeks to bestow embryos with the constitutional rights of children and that would thus entail a national abortion ban: “There is a view, common among leaders of the Democratic party, that babies deserve no legal protections in the womb—that is a common view in the Democratic party; all I’m saying is that view’s wrong,” Vance said. Spokespeople for Vance, the Trump campaign, and the RNC did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Monday night about Vance’s stance on fetal personhood and a national ban, but as I’ve reported, a top Republican official involved in crafting the latest GOP platform itself has argued that it supports fetal personhood.
Vance has also—as my former colleague Katie Herchenroeder noted—argued against no-fault divorce and for married people to have more kids. In that 2021 interview with the local reporter, the then-candidate said, “I think part of the problem of American decline is people who believe that not having kids is, like, a lifestyle brand,” before proceeding to deride people on the left for raising concerns about how having kids could exacerbate climate change.
That same year, Vance made headlines when he said “there’s something comparable between abortion and slavery,” alleging that both have a “morally distorting effect on the entire society.” And after the Supreme Court yanked the constitutional right to abortion from Americans in the Dobbs decision in June 2022, Vance posted on X: “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,” appearing to try to quell criticism that the overruling of Roe would stymie women’s professional advancement, among other effects.
Last year, Vance signed onto a letter with more than 40 other Republican lawmakers demanding that the Department of Justice apply the more than 150-year-old Comstock Act to “shut down all mail-order abortion operations” nationwide; it’s unclear if they were referring to abortion pills only or all abortions, given that procedural abortions require the mailing of equipment, but the letter specifically mentions abortion pills in places. Vance also opposed Ohio’s abortion rights ballot measure last year and lamented its success after it passed in November, calling it “a gut punch…politically dumb and morally repugnant.” In the same post on X, he said he’d support “abortion restrictions very early in pregnancy with exceptions” because it polls better than restrictions that lack exceptions. (Fact-check: True!) On CBS’ Face the Nation in May, Vance seemed to try walking back his most extreme views—but only by endorsing Trump’s take on leaving most abortion policy to the states, and with a qualifier: “I wanna save as many babies as possible.”
All of which is to say: it’s not surprising the anti-abortion side is cheering his place on the Trump 2024 ticket.
In a statement Monday night, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called Vance “an exceptional selection” for the Trump ticket, and pointed out that her group has given him an “A-plus” rating on what they call their “national pro-life scorecard” tracking his support for anti-abortion legislation. “With Vance on the ticket, we are more committed than ever in our efforts to deliver the winning pro-life message,” she said.
Carol Tobias, the president of National Right to Life, called Vance “an excellent choice,” adding, “he is committed to promoting the right to life.” The National Right to Life statement also touts Vance’s support for prohibiting public funding of abortion; nominating anti-abortion judges; and supporting funding for anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers that seek to dissuade people from having abortions, often via misinformation delivered by volunteers, not licensed medical professionals.
Others, though, were more tepid in their support, given that Vance said just last week on NBC’s Meet the Press that he now supports access to mifepristone, the first of two pills typically used in medication abortion. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, touted Vance’s “unapologetically pro-life” record in a post on X but said that “he either recently changed his mind or his public talking points” about abortion pills, adding, “they shouldn’t be available in any state.”
“What I don’t know about Senator Vance as VP Vance is how much of a champion he will be for the preborn babies,” she continued, calling for “a new deal with President Trump with firm promises with what he will do to limit or end” abortion.
Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action, said it’s “heartbreakingly wrong” that Vance and Trump support making abortion pills accessible, urging them to change their positions. (It’s worth noting, though, that there are major conservative forces at play seeking to roll back access to mifepristone: Project 2025, an initiative led by dozens of conservative groups and spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, has said “the Department of Justice in the next conservative administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of [abortion] pills.”)
The Biden-Harris campaign seized on Vance’s history in their reaction to the news, with campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon alleging Vance would “make it his mission to enact Trump’s Project 2025 agenda at the expense of American families,” including by supporting “banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors.”
For abortion rights supporters, Vance’s record is, indeed, frightening. “Donald Trump selecting J. D. Vance as his pick for vice president provides even more evidence that a Trump administration will stop at nothing to ban all abortion,” Reproductive Freedom For All said in a statement. But it’s also worth remembering Vance also has a strong track record of changing with the political winds—remember, this is the man who once called Trump “cultural heroin,” “reprehensible,” and “a cynical asshole…or America’s Hitler.”
“His views seem to evolve pretty quickly as the politics requires them to,” Mary Ziegler, a leading abortion historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis, told me today. And with most Americans supporting abortion rights and opposing the Dobbs decision, and Trump trying to distance himself from Dobbs’ consequences, don’t be surprised if he and his new running mate try to promote a “softened” stance on abortion—just don’t believe them.
Correction, July 16: An earlier version of this article misstated the year when Vance made comments comparing abortion to slavery.
Update, July 17: This article has been updated to include recent comments by Vance in an interview with CBS.
Update, July 19: This article has been updated to include context about Vance’s previously articulated support for using the Comstock Act to criminalize “mail-order abortion operations.”
