Sen. JD Vance, who has been dragged for his controversial comments about women ever since Donald Trump selected him as his running mate, added to the list Wednesday by suggesting that it isn’t “normal” for women to care about abortion rights.
In a post-Roe v. Wade country where Republican lawmakers have restricted that right for millions of women in dozens of states, Vance didn’t seem to understand why that might be a key issue in the upcoming election when asked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“One of my dear friends said to me tonight that all these suburban women—all they care about is abortion, and they don’t understand the decision is with the states now. It’s not banned nationally, even if some people want it to be banned nationally,” she said. “What do you say to suburban women out there who are marinating in this propaganda?”
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Vance promptly suggested that such concerns were abnormal.
“Well, first of all, I don’t buy that, Laura. I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about, right?” he replied. “They care about inflation, they care about the price of groceries, they care about public safety in the streets where their kids play.”
Vance maintained that Trump, whose three Supreme Court nominees each voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and who suggested last week that he would ban abortion pill mifepristone, has “charted a very reasonable course for the American people” on the abortion issue.
Since the conservative-majority court’s decision in June 2022, voters have rejected efforts to restrict abortion rights not only in traditionally blue states like California and Vermont, but Kansas, Kentucky and Vance’s home state of Ohio. The outcome in the latter case was “pretty sobering” to Ingraham’s colleague, Sean Hannity, who grew concerned that the GOP could be scaring off suburban voters.
Vance, based on his comments to Ingraham, didn’t seem to agree.
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump’s running mate declined to commit to an Oct. 1 debate with his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who caught wind of Vance’s abortion comment later Wednesday night.
“It’s pretty normal to respect a woman’s right to make her own damn health care decisions,” he wrote on X in response.
