“I Just Want Women to Have More Choices”: Sen. JD Vance, Who Likens Abortion to Murder
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance tried to assure NBC News Meet the press host Kristen Welker that of his purpose Behind the “sarcastic comment” he made about childless cat ladies was his view that women want more “choices”.
In the summer of 2021, then-U.S. Senate candidate speak Tucker Carlson that he believes the United States is actually run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable with their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” In that interview, he referred to current Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who is the stepmotherby name
When Welker asked him about these comments, Vance said he had spoken to women and what he “heard all the time” was[s] “A lot of young women feel like they don’t have a lot of choices,” he continued. “I just want women to have more choices.”
Vance talked about how difficult it is for mothers to have children and a productive and healthy career. This reality is especially difficult for the approximately 24 million working mothers (with children under 18) across the country who tend to earn less than their fathers and is more likely to do heavy work essential to keeping children healthy at home.
On other tough decisions for mothers, Vance has proposed that women should stay in abusive marriages for the sake of their children.
Sunday’s MTP interview was the latest in a series of apologies for Vance’s past statements that instead turned into a constant rehash of the original quote. On Sunday, Welker gave his guest multiple opportunities to apologize directly, to little avail.
Welker began by saying that some women felt the comments were a “punch in the gut.” “Do you regret making that comment?” she asked.
“Look,” Vance replied, “I’m really sorry that so many people have misunderstood the issue.”
“But do you regret what you said, Senator?” Welker continued to ask.
“Look, sometimes I will say things that people disagree with. I’m a realist. I will joke, I will say sarcastic things, and I think it’s important that we focus on policy.”
“But again, hurry up,” Welker urged, “because people have spoken directly to you, have spoken up, have said they were offended, they were hurt by those comments, do you wish you had never made those ‘bare-cat’ comments?”
“I think it’s important for me to be a normal human being, to sometimes say things that people don’t agree with—”
“So no regrets?” Welker interrupted.
“I’m sorry, Kristen, but telling that joke three years ago isn’t on my top ten list of regrets,” Vance said with a smile.
Women across the country have shown up—in votein ballot boxAnd on the street—that they want more choices. Choices like if they want to have children and Who have the power to intervene in that process—options that Vance has advocated eliminating for years.
In 2023, when the people of his home state of Ohio voted to enshrine access to abortion in their constitution, Vance published an article condemning declare on X, the former Twitter user, said in part, “There is something sick about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that killing their children is liberating. So keep fighting for our country’s children and find a way to win.”
In Vance’s latest Meet the press In an interview, he stated that his running mate, former president Donald Trumpwill not sign a federal abortion ban—although he has spoken out in support once while he was in office.
And when the Texas legislature passing near-total abortion ban by 2021, Vance speak that “the issue is not whether a woman should be forced to bear a child” but “whether a child should be allowed to live even if the circumstances of that child’s birth are in some way inconvenient or problematic for society.”
“We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices,” he continued in a Newsletter episode at the time, “but above all, we want women and boys in the womb to have the right to live.”
