JD Vance Didn't Fool Anybody With His Slick Rick 'Empathy' On Abortion
But we're going to need Democrats to be more clear on what 'palliative care' is.
If one thing was made clear in last night’s debate, it is that we are winning the national debate on abortion. I mean, it’s been clear for some time now, given that every state that has had a chance to vote on abortion has chosen to keep it legal — but the fact that the once fiercely anti-choice JD Vance is now Team Whatever on the subject is as sure a sign as any.
Either that or he’s just trying super hard to look like he doesn’t completely despise women who choose not to have children.
After telling an ever-so-heartfelt speech about how he knew a woman who had an abortion and told him that her life would have been ruined without it because she was in an abusive relationship with the father, Vance told the nation that he understands that Republicans “have to earn people’s trust back” when it comes to taking care of families — a lovely sentiment, but also of no help whatsoever to someone who doesn’t want to be genetically tied to an abuser for the rest of her life. Or to those who are helped by the kind of social programs that Republicans vehemently oppose.
But Vance was really trying for empathetic and understanding! Just like a normal human man who would never accuse Haitians of eating people’s pets or rage against childless woman or support a nationwide abortion ban.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Governor, your time is up. Senator, let me ask you about that. He mentioned it was, I think, referring to a national ban. In the past, you have supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. In fact, you said if someone can't support legislation like that, quote, you are making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world. My question is, why have you changed your position?
JD VANCE: Well, Norah, first of all, I never supported a national ban. I did during, when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial birth abortion ban in this, in place in this country at the federal level. I don't think anybody's trying to get rid of that, or at least I hope not, though I know that Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance.
Now would have been a good time to ask JD Vance what he thinks “partial birth abortion” even is or if he is perhaps aware that it’s not even a medical term. But aside from that, let’s be very clear — JD Vance has absolutely supported a national ban.
Indeed, he had this up on his website right up until Donald Trump picked him as his running mate.
I am 100 percent pro-life, and believe that abortion has turned our society into a place where we see children as an inconvenience to be thrown away rather than a blessing to be nurtured. Eliminating abortion is first and foremost about protecting the unborn, but it's also about making our society more pro-child and pro-family. The historic Dobbs decision puts this new era of society into motion, one that prioritizes family and the sanctity of all life.
He also signed a letter to Merrick Garland demanding that the Comstock Act be used to make it illegal to send abortion pills through the mail and that those who do mail them be prosecuted under RICO statutes.
“We demand that you act swiftly and in accordance with the law, shut down all mail-order abortion operations, and hold abortionists, pharmacists, international traffickers, and online purveyors, who break the Federal mail-order abortion laws, accountable,” the letter read.
”Gee!” you may be saying to yourself right now, “That sounds ever so familiar! Where have I heard this idea before?” Let me help you with that — it’s one of the ideas prominently featured in Project 2025.
Additionally, banning abortion after 15 weeks is, in fact, a ban. It’s a ban that will actually hurt the most vulnerable patients and those who have had serious complications with their wanted pregnancies.
In an attempt to make it sound like there actually are things Republicans might do to “earn people’s trust back” (not sure when they had it in the first place, given that all of their “family values” seem to center around other people’s sex lives), Vance suggested — during the portion of the evening dedicated to paid family leave and subsidized childcare — that federal monies should also go to churches and neighbors for childcare.
We should have a family care model that makes choice possible. And I think this is a very important substantive difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris's approach. I mean, look, if you look at the federal programs that we have that support paid family leave right now, the community development block grant, and there's another block grant program that spends a lot of money from the federal government. These programs only go to one kind of childcare model. Let's say you'd like your church, maybe, to help you out with child care. Maybe you live in a rural area or an urban area, and you'd like to get together with families in your neighborhood to provide childcare in the way that makes the most sense. You don't get access to any of these federal monies. We want to promote choice in how we deliver family care and how we promote childcare because, look, it is unacceptable.
Yeah, except for how that’s not the kind of thing one can really track in order to ensure that the money is actually going to childcare. The way it works now is that the money from the block grant goes directly to the childcare facilities and parents who meet the requirements get a subsidized rate. That is a lot easier to manage than “Oh, I paid the neighbor girl $30 to watch my kid after school for a bit, please give me money for that.”
What else did he lie about? Let’s see!
[A]s I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion, where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late term abortion. That is, I think, whether it's not pro-choice or pro-abortion, that is fundamentally barbaric. And that's why I use that word, Norah, is because some of what we've seen … Do you want to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions against their will? Because Kamala Harris has supported suing Catholic nuns to violate their freedom of conscience. We can be a big and diverse country where we respect people's freedom of conscience. And make the country more pro-baby and pro-family.
Doctors are always required to provide life-saving care, in situations where there is a chance for survival. The bill does not mention this, because it doesn’t have to. It’s already the law in Minnesota and everywhere.
As far as the Catholic hospitals go? Well, just yesterday, a story came out about a California Catholic hospital that denied an emergency abortion to Anna Nusslock, who was 15 weeks pregnant and suffering from a pre-viable, preterm rupture of membranes (PPROM). The doctor there told her that her twins would not survive, but that they couldn’t do anything as long as one still had a heartbeat, and she wasn’t close enough to death. Telling her that she needed immediate intervention to prevent serious health complications, they sent her on her way to another hospital with — no joke — a bucket and some towels, "in case something happen[ed] in the car" on the way there. Something did happen. By the time she made it to the next hospital, she was fully hemorrhaging.
The state of California is suing that hospital … and I don’t think too many other people would have a problem with that. There are a lot of places that have a hospital shortage, and since 1 out of every 7 hospital beds is in a Catholic hospital, it is pretty reasonable to expect that they provide emergency care in these situations.
For his part, this was easily one of Walz’s best moments of the evening. He didn’t fall for any nonsense about Minnesota allowing abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, he spoke compassionately about the women who have died as a result of these laws and made the clear case that they should not have died just because they happened to be geographically located in the same area as … I’d say “some ignorant people,” but I think it’s quite clear that “ignorant lawmakers, frequently in heavily gerrymandered states” are the real problem.
Amber Thurman’s family issued a lovely statement thanking Walz for his advocacy.
"Tonight, we commend Governor Tim Walz for telling Amber's story and for his unwavering commitment to defending women's reproductive rights. Amber's tragic death was a direct result of Georgia's archaic and dangerously restrictive abortion laws, which denied her the life-saving care she so desperately needed,” they wrote.
Various “fact checkers” claimed that Walz was incorrect when he claimed that Project 2025 called for a pregnancy registry — but the fact is, it does call for an abortion and miscarriage registry that is, by its own admission, far beyond what exists now.
The CDC's abortion surveillance and maternity mortality reporting systems are woefully inadequate. CDC abortion data are reported by states on a voluntary basis, and California, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not submit abortion data at all. Accurate and reliable statistical data about abortion, abortion survivors, and abortion-related maternal deaths are essential to timely, reliable public health and policy analysis.
Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother's state of residence, and by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.
That is pretty disturbing, no?
The only thing I do wish, and I wish this of all Democrats running for office, and of all journalists interviewing Republicans — I wish he had asked JD Vance, specifically, what he thinks should happen when a child that cannot survive is born. Because when these creeps talk about “post-birth abortions,” they are talking about palliative care, which allows a newborn with no chance of survival to stay comfortable, to stay with its parents until it passes instead of performing frequently painful lifesaving measures that will not work because, again, no chance of survival.
I would also like all of them to be clearer about the fact that the reason we don’t do “limits” or “national standards” is because we don’t think anyone wants to hear, from a doctor, that they are going to have to wait until their partner, spouse, sister, daughter is close enough to death before they can provide medical care, because the government said so. That would be nice! Because anyone who has ever been in an ER with someone they love knows that all you want is for the doctors to do everything they can as quickly as they can.
I do think it’s a win for us that Republicans know that opposing abortion is a losing proposition, but I also don’t think that Vance’s fake compassion and empathy really fooled anyone here. The polls are all currently showing that there’s no clear winner in last night’s debate, and that actually tells us a lot given Vance’s overall slickness. If he had remotely convinced anyone that he wasn’t a threat to reproductive rights, or wasn’t entirely full of shit across the board, he’d probably be doing a lot better.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
As a woman who faced a dangerous pregnancy and had problems obtaining an abortion secondary to insurance issues this topic always sends my B/P up through the roof. I remember too damned well the frustration and all-consuming fear that overwhelmed both paul and I. Fortunately I was in a position where I was able to obtain the necessary abortion at our city's one non-Catholic hospital and pay for it myself. That is NOT an option for far too many young women facing unwanted or potentially life-threatening pregnancies.
How in the HELL can anyone expect anything good to result from FORCING women to give birth to children they're not ready to care for? This nation is getting too damned close to making "A Handmaid's Tale" a reality.
Nora, you ignorant slut, I am just trying to explain, Nora, that I have great empathy for women, Nora.