Warren on Trump-Vance pledge to veto abortion ban: ‘American women are not stupid’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Sunday pushed back against Sen. JD Vance’s (R-Ohio) suggestion that former President Trump would veto a federal abortion ban if were elected president and such a bill arrived on his desk.

“American women are not stupid, and we are not going to trust the futures of our daughters and granddaughters to two men who have openly bragged about blocking access to abortion for women all across this country,” Warren said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” when asked about Vance, the GOP vice presidential nominee, saying he thinks Trump would veto a ban.

Warren noted that even without signing legislation that bans or restricts abortion nationwide, abortion access could still be in jeopardy. Some Republicans have signaled their desire to crack down on abortions by invoking the Comstock Act, which bans the mailing of abortion-related materials but has not been used for that purpose in a century.  

Trump and Vance have both said they would not support the use of the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide, and they support states’ rights to determine their abortion laws.

Warren noted, however, that Vance joined fellow Republican lawmakers last year in writing a letter to the Department of Justice, asking that the Comstock Act be invoked to “shut down all mail-order operations.”

Anchor Kristen Welker asked about the GOP ticket’s pledge not to use the legislation to ban abortion, and said, “Sounds like you don’t buy it.”

“Don’t buy it? Just read it. JD Vance actually sent a letter last year to the Department of Justice saying, enforce the Comstock Act. And remember he did that, and then Donald Trump picked him to be his vice president,” Warren said.

“The only way that we’re going to protect access to abortion is to have a Democratic Congress send a bill to Kamala Harris, she will sign it into law, and then we will restore a right to half the population in this country, and no longer will a woman have to go into an emergency room and be told she’s not near enough death to get the medical treatment that she needs,” she added.

Vance, in an interview that aired Saturday, said he thinks Trump would veto a federal abortion ban if it came across his desk when asked about efforts in his party to still push for a bill restricting abortion access nationwide.

“I think he would. He’s said that explicitly that he would,” Vance told Welker when asked whether Trump would veto the hypothetical bill.

“And to be clear, Donald Trump I think has staked his position and made it very explicit. He wants this to be a state decision. States are going to make this determination themselves,” he later added.