Ohio Sen. JD Vance said the vote by Ohioans in 2023 that overwhelmingly approved amending the state constitution to protect individual reproductive rights forced him to realize that Republicans needed to shift their position on abortion.
During the vice presidential debate Tuesday with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Republican senator denied that he ever supported a national ban on abortion, but came to realized that people do not trust Republicans on the issue of reproductive rights.
“You know, one of the things that changed: In the state of Ohio we had a referendum in 2023, and the people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position,” Vance said. “I think that what I learned from that … is that we’ve got to do a better job winning back people’s trust.”
Advocates for Ohio’s constitutional amendment argued they couldn’t trust Ohio’s lawmakers on reproductive rights after the GOP-dominated state legislature repeatedly adopted policies to limit access. The amendment established “an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.” It also creates legal protections for anyone who assists a person with receiving reproductive medical treatment.
Vance said Tuesday that winning back trust on the issue is a step toward promoting pro-family policies and values, he said.
“So many young women would love to have families. So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihoods, destroy their education, destroy their relationships,” Vance said.
“We have got to earn people’s trust back,” he said. “And that’s why Donald Trump and I are committed to pursuing pro-family policies. Making childcare more accessible. Making fertility treatments more accessible.
“We’ve got to do a better job of that and that’s what real leadership is,” he said.
Vance’s statement Tuesday is far from the position he has laid out in the past in support of restrictive laws controlling reproductive rights. Since he was chosen as Trump’s running mate, Vance has had to defend those comments as Trump has staked out a more moderate position for the GOP on abortion. Even as Vance and Walz debated, Trump was sending social media posts in all caps declaring that he would veto a national abortion ban.
When he was a candidate for the Senate, Vance argued against the need for exceptions for rape and incest in restrictive statutes enacted by states, downplaying such circumstances as “inconvenient.”
When asked whether abortion laws should include exceptions for rape and incest, the Washington Post wrote that Vance said he thinks “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Vance made the comment in an interview with Spectrum News in Columbus.
“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 told Spectrum News.
“The question to me is really about the baby,” Vance added. “We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.”
Vance has previously expressed his concern that the nation is becoming anti-family. He contends that was behind his quip about “childless cat ladies.”
That remark sparked blowback from Democrats, particularly women, and also drew ridicule and prompted memes on the internet.
His original remark came in 2021, but as a candidate for vice president, his previous remarks have all drawn scrutiny.
It was part of a complaint that the “childless left” lacked a “physical commitment to this country.” The “cat ladies” remark came as he was criticizing Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, saying “the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance said.
That same year he went after American Federation of Teachers Head Randi Weingarten, who calls herself “a mother by marriage,” for particular criticism, saying she “doesn’t have a single child.”
Yet, she is in a position of shaping education policy.
“If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,” Vance said then.
When questioned about his comments, Vance doubled down. He argued the media has blown his comments out of proportion and taken them out of context.
He told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an appearance on “Meet the Press” that his point remained true, that as a nation we don’t put enough emphasis on family.
“But what I’ve simply said is that I think it’s really a profound change that has happened in our country when we become anti-family.”
