By Helen Coster, Alexandra Ulmer and Stephanie Kelly
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Democrats are assailing Senator J.D. Vance on the issue of abortion, saying past comments made by Donald Trump’s newly-tapped running mate are evidence Republicans will pursue more abortion curbs if they win in November.
Vance has previously taken a more hardline approach on abortion than the former president, who opposes abortion but backs exceptions in cases of rape, incest or where the mother’s life is in danger. Vance once implied victims of rape and incest should be required to carry pregnancies to term but he has since said he supports those exceptions.
Trump’s decision to make Vance his No. 2 gave President Joe Biden’s campaign a fresh opening to go after Republicans on abortion rights, which Democrats view as a galvanizing issue that could attract independent voters and increase turnout in the Nov. 5 election. Most opinion polls show a majority of Americans broadly back abortion rights.
Going after Vance’s previously stated abortion views could help Democrats raise more doubts about where Trump stands, said Christopher Devine, co-author of a book about running mates and a professor of political science at Dayton University in Ohio.
“Voters are still trying to figure out what are Donald Trump’s actual views,” Devine said.
Trump has distanced himself from a federal abortion ban and says the issue should be left solely to state legislatures, a position the Republican Party adopted in its new platform, to the dismay of anti-abortion activists who sought more far-reaching language. Vance said this week he agrees with that approach.
After Vance got the vice presidential nod on Monday, the Democratic National Committee launched 16 billboards and a mobile billboard in the Milwaukee area focused in part on reproductive rights.
“Trump-Vance Project 2025,” read one billboard, referring to a set of conservative policy proposals known as Project 2025. “Ban abortion, punish women.”
In a new video on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris depicted Vance as an extremist who “supports a national abortion ban.” The Biden campaign and allied Democrats also held a press conference on Wednesday in Milwaukee, where Republicans are holding their national convention this week, to highlight their rivals’ abortion policies for voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
“J.D. Vance is an anti-choice politician whose views on reproductive freedom and women’s rights would take us back decades,” Quentin Fulks, the Biden-Harris principal deputy campaign manager, told reporters.
The Biden campaign, which is also trying to fundraise off the back of Vance’s past comments, says Trump is downplaying abortion restrictions that are unpopular with voters to help him get elected. The campaign argues that if Trump is reelected and Republicans take control of both houses of Congress, he would likely support any restrictive measure passed by lawmakers.
The Trump-Vance campaign said Democrats were lying about Vance’s record on abortion. “He has repeatedly made clear that he supports reasonable exceptions,” said campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, describing the approach as “smear tactics.”
Republicans interviewed by Reuters at the party’s convention on Tuesday were skeptical that Democrats would make inroads with voters by attacking Vance’s abortion views.
Ten women attending said in interviews that they supported Trump’s vice presidential pick and were unfazed by Vance’s past comments on abortion, even if they didn’t fully agree with them.
“It’s not that big a deal to me,” Julie Spokes, a convention attendee from Rockwall, Texas, said of abortion as an election issue. “I think people have a lot more problems than that.”
VANCE’S VIEWS
In his first interview on Monday after clinching the VP nod, Vance said Trump’s views on abortion are going to be the views that dominate the Republican Party.
“You have to believe in reasonable exceptions, because that’s where the American people are,” Vance said in the Fox News interview. “And you’ve got to let individual states make this decision.”
That stands in contrast to his comments in 2021 – that the Biden-Harris campaign quickly seized on – when he emphasized a baby’s right to life when asked whether anti-abortion laws should include an exception for victims of rape and incest.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he said in an interview on the Spectrum News 1 “Dear Ohio” podcast. “At the end of day we are talking about an unborn baby. What kind of society do we want to have? A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded?”
He added: “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” he said.
During his 2022 Senate bid, Vance said he believed in certain exceptions to abortion, citing the case of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who had to go to Indiana for an abortion, but then stopped short of endorsing an exception in all rape cases.
He also said in 2022 that a national abortion bill proposed by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, which would have allowed for exceptions in the instance of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is at risk, was “totally reasonable.” He advocated for those exceptions on CNN again last year.
After Ohio voters added the right to access abortion care to the state’s constitution in November 2023, Vance in an X post described the vote as a “gut punch” for abortion opponents.
Dawn Marquardt, a delegate from Wyoming, said she agrees with Trump’s abortion position. The more conservative views Vance expressed in 2021 do not dampen her enthusiasm for him or the ticket.
“I like that he’s younger, very conservative and not afraid to stand up to the news media and express his mind,” she said.
(Reporting by Helen Coster and Alexandra Ulmer in Milwaukee and Stephanie Kelly in New York. Additional reporting by Joseph Ax and Nathan Layne in Milwaukee.; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Deepa Babington)
