J.D. Vance attempted to distort his own position on abortion in the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, suggesting that he “never supported a national ban.” In the past, he has said that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was needed to stop women from going to another state to get an abortion.
Vance appeared to understand the political unpopularity of the Republican position on abortion. “My party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us,” he said, while maintaining that he agrees with his running mate Donald Trump that abortion rights should be decided at a state level.
Vance then went on to outline a set of “pro-family” priorities, which are actually being proposed by Democrats.
“I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word,” he said. “I want us to support fertility treatments.” (Senate Republicans just killed a bill that would have protected IVF nationwide.) “I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies.” (Kamala Harris is proposing a $6,000 child tax credit for families in the first year after a baby is born; Vance has also floated an expanded child tax credit, although Trump has not committed to one.) “I want us to make it easier for young families to afford a home, so they can afford a place to raise that family.” (Harris, not Trump, is proposing $25,000 in down payment assistance for families to buy their first homes; Trump’s housing plan is vague on details and seems to rely on mass deportation.)
Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, said “things worked best when Roe v. Wade was in place,” and he accused Vance of citing policy proposals Trump hadn’t fully endorsed.
“In Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade. We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care,” Walz said, before adding: “This is basic human right. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. This is about health care. In Minnesota, we are ranked first in health care for a reason. We trust women. We trust doctors.”
Trump and Vance are currently trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, a plan for the second Trump administration drafted by Trump allies that calls for imposing new federal restrictions on abortion that would severely limit access to reproductive care nationwide. Project 2025 proposes that the FDA revoke approval of mifepristone (one of the pills used in medication abortions) and calls for denying access to abortion as emergency care.
When Vance was asked if he planned to create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency, he said “certainly we won’t.” But Project 2025 proposes to rename the Department of Health and Human Services as the “Department of Life,” and recommends that the CDC implement nationwide “abortion surveillance” to track abortions, complications, and miscarriages nationwide.
