The former President and current presidential nominee for the Republican Party in the US, Donald Trump, has selected Senator JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick.
There has been widespread media coverage regarding JD Vance’s views on abortion. Much of the coverage has either not gone into much depth or been deeply partisan. Our news team has done a deep dive, reviewing all his past statements and votes on abortion along with a number of other resources to produce this in-depth article on his views on abortion.
On Monday of this week, Donald Trump announced that James David (JD) Vance, a senator from Ohio, would be his Vice President (VP) if he wins the election later this year.
Who is JD Vance?
Born in 1984 in Ohio, US, Vance was launched to fame through the publishing of his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy (2016), which details his experiences growing up in a white, working-class family and his mother’s struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. Raised largely by his grandparents, Vance entered the military in 2003 and was deployed to Iraq.
After leaving the military in 2007, he completed a law degree at Yale University in 2013 and was elected to the US Senate in 2022, assuming office in January 2023.
What does Vance believe about abortion?
Although Vance has made a number of strong pro-life statements, has supported pro-life legislation and has consistently described himself as pro-life, he has also supported the continued availability of mifepristone, which is one of the two drugs used for medical abortions. He also appears to have backed away from being as stridently pro-life as he used to be.
Vance has been open about his support for the Dobbs v Jackson Supreme Court decision, which overturned a prior Supreme Court decision, Roe v Wade, and so permits states to make their own abortion laws.
When a piece of pro-life legislation in Ohio was defeated in November of last year, Vance said it “was a gut punch. No sugar coating it”.
“Giving up on the unborn is not an option. It’s politically dumb and morally repugnant”, he added.
On a podcast in 2022, Vance said “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally”.
In January 2023, Vance, along with 46 other senators, introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. The legislation would have established a prohibition on federal funding for abortion.
In response to a question on abortion on CNN in the wake of the Ohio pro-life legislation, which he supported, Vance said “We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans, they just don’t, and I say that as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for the life of the mother, for rape and so forth”.
In an interview for CBS news in May of this year, Vance said “I am pro-life. I wanna save as many babies as possible. And sure, I think it’s totally reasonable to say that late-term abortions should not happen, with reasonable exceptions”.
During the Senate race in 2022, Vance said he would vote for the national abortion ban at 15 weeks. “I think it’s totally reasonable to say you cannot abort a baby, especially for elective reasons, after 15 weeks of gestation”, he said. “No civilized country allows it. I don’t want the United States to be an exception”.
Has Vance changed his position on abortion?
While Vance has been vocal about his opposition to abortion, since becoming the VP nominee, the strongest pro-life statements have been removed from his website, which now forwards directly to Donald Trump’s campaign website.
The statement on his website used to read “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 in to motion, one that prioritizes family and the sanctity of all life”.
In addition to the apparent scrubbing of his website, there has also been some recent controversy surrounding his position on access to medical abortions that involve the use of the abortion drug mifepristone.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol to perform a medical abortion “through ten weeks gestation”.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, which was previously the research arm of the US’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, approximately 642,700 medical abortions took place in the US in 2023.
In the aftermath of the unanimous Supreme Court decision that rejected a plea to place restrictions on access to the abortion drug mifepristone, Vance has been pushed on his views on the matter.
In an NBC interview earlier this month, Vance said “On the question of the abortion pill, what so many of us have said is that look, we certainly don’t, the Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication. Donald Trump has supported that opinion, I support that opinion. I think it’s important to say that we actually have to have an important conversation in this country about what our abortion policy should be. Donald Trump is the pragmatic leader here. He is saying that most abortion policy is going to be decided by the states”.
When pushed further by the host who asked “Just to be clear – you support mifepristone being accessible?”, Vance replied, “Yes, Kristen, I do”.
Changing Republican view on abortion
Vance’s answer, which could be interpreted as a retreat from his strong pro-life position, has come at the same time as the Republican Platform (manifesto) appears to have watered down the party’s commitment to protecting the lives of unborn children. The previous Republican Platforms, in 2016 and 2020, and reportedly unchanged since 1984, stated: “The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed”.
The 2024 Republican Platform boasts that the power to decide abortion law has been given to the states and commits the party to “oppose Late Term Abortion”.
At the same time as his public statements on the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone, in an interview on Fox News after his nomination as VP, Vance said “I do want us to be more pro-life”.
On the issue of abortion, he said “it is reasonable to let voters in states make those decisions, it doesn’t mean you have to agree with it but you have to have some respect for the political process”.
“You have to believe in reasonable exceptions because that’s where the American people are and you’ve got to let individual states make these decisions”.
How have pro-lifers reacted to the Vance VP pick?
The response among pro-lifers in the US to Trump picking Vance as his running mate has been mixed. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America greeted his appointment with excitement saying “J.D. Vance is an exceptional selection as President Trump’s running mate” and went on to praise what they see as his courage in exposing the extreme abortion agenda of his opponent in Ohio’s 2022 US Senate race.
At the same time, pro-life activist and founder of LiveAction, Lila Rose, has been highly critical of Vance’s apparent softening of his abortion stance saying “Both J.D. Vance and President Trump support the legalization of abortion pills. This is heartbreaking and wrong. Vance was once strongly against the murder of all preborn babies”.
Rose went on to urge both men to change their position on abortion.
Our team have also undertaken a ‘deep dive’ on Kamala Harris’ (the likely Democratic presidential nominee) views on abortion which you can read here.
