Psaki slams Vance’s stance on abortion and childless women

MSNBC host Jen Psaki on Sunday offered a provocative commentary on Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), criticizing the GOP vice presidential nominee’s position on abortion and saying “he wants all women to have children even if they are raped.”

“He wants to force the victims of rape and incest to bear the children of their attacks,” Psaki, the former White House press secretary for President Biden, said on her MSNBC show, “Inside with Jen Psaki.”

“That’s his position, a circumstance that he dismissed as a mere inconvenience, and he said that federal intervention might be necessary to prevent women from crossing state lines for reproductive care. So basically, to sum this all up, he wants all women to have children even if they are raped,” Psaki said.

Taylor Van Kirk, a Vance spokesperson, said Monday the Ohio senator agrees with Trump “that each state should have the chance to individually set their own abortion laws.”

“Desperate attacks from Democrats will not distract voters from the deadly effects of Kamala’s wide-open border, the untenable cost of living by her inflationary spending or any other aspect of her far-left, radical agenda,” Van Kirk said to The Hill.

Vance has been a steadfast supporter of abortion restrictions, while also backing some exceptions.

During his campaign for the Senate, Vance supported Texas’s ban on abortion, which does not make exceptions unless the mother’s life is at risked.

Previously asked whether a woman “should be forced to carry a child to term” after being the victim of rape or incest, Vance said he rejected the premise of the question.

He appeared to clarify his stance the following year, saying he has “always believed in reasonable exceptions,” including in the case of rape, incest and the mother’s life.

In a social media thread last November, Vance said he supports Trump’s view that exceptions are needed with abortion restrictions.

Vance’s agreement with Trump’s view that states can make their own abortion laws contrasts with his older remark that “some minimum national standard is totally fine with me.” 

In an interview with CNN last December, Vance said Republicans must accept Americans do not want “blanket abortion bans,” but also opposed Ohio’s constitutional amendment last year that included protections for abortion in the state.

Vance is separately facing backlash for 2021 remarks he made criticizing those who don’t have children.

In those remarks, Vance told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

“First of all, JD Vance really has no right to question why anyone doesn’t have kids, whatever the reason may be,” Psaki said. “It’s none of his business whether a woman is childless by choice or an adoptive mother or would-be mother or stepmother like Kamala Harris, but his comments are also insulting to the millions of women who have ever struggled with fertility issues.”

Vance defended the “childless cat ladies” remarks last week, calling it a “sarcastic comment” and pivoting to attack Democrats as “antifamily.”

“I know the media wants to attack me and wants me to back down on this, Megyn, but the simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” Vance said on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” last week.

Psaki also pointed to remarks Vance made in July 2021, when he suggested parents should have “more of an ability to speak their voice” at the polls than those who do not have children.

“And for those who don’t have kids, he thinks their vote should count less and he has special hatred for those childless women who happen to have cats when the truth is JD Vance is passing a whole lot of judgement on millions of people in this country,” Psaki said.

Karoline Leavitt, a Trump national spokesperson, attempted to clarify the 2021 remarks last week, stating they were “taken out of context and unfairly attacked.”

In a clip of Vance’s full remarks from 2021, the Ohio senator spoke about the difficulties some people face in having kids and said his comments were not about them.

“A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons…there are people of course for biological reasons, medical reasons that can’t have children. The target of these remarks is not them,” Vance said at the time.

This story was updated at 4:06 p.m.