MSNBC host Jen Psaki made provocative comments about Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) on Sunday, criticizing the GOP vice presidential nominee’s stance on abortion and saying, “He wants every woman to have a baby, even if she’s raped.”
“He’s trying to force victims of rape and incest to give birth to the children that were born from their attacks,” Psaki, President Biden’s former White House press secretary, said on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
“That’s his position, and he has dismissed the situation as a mere inconvenience and said that federal intervention may be necessary to prevent women from crossing state lines for reproductive health care. So, basically, to summarise this, he wants all women to have children even if they are raped,” Psaki said.
The Hill has reached out to Vance and former President Trump’s campaign for comment.
Vance opposes abortion and praised the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but has also spoken out in support of exceptions at times.
During his campaign for Senate, Vance supported Texas’ anti-abortion law, which makes no exceptions except when the mother’s life is in danger.
Previously, when asked whether women who have been victims of rape or incest should be “forced to give birth,” Judge Vance rejected the premise of the question.
The following year, he appeared to change his position, saying he had “always allowed for reasonable exceptions”, including in cases of rape, incest and endangering the mother’s life.
Vance recently echoed Trump’s view that states should be able to set their own abortion laws, in contrast to his previous comments that he was “totally OK with there being a minimum national standard.”
Vance has also faced separate criticism for comments he made in 2021 criticizing people who don’t have children.
In his remarks, Vance told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the country was “run by childless, catty-cat women who are miserable about their lives and the choices they’ve made, and they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
“First of all, J.D. Vance has no right to question why anyone chooses not to have children, whatever the reason may be,” Psaki said. “While it doesn’t concern him whether a woman is childfree by choice, an adoptive mother, or a future mother or stepmother like Kamala Harris, his comments are an insult to the millions of women who have struggled with infertility at some point.”
Vance last week defended his “childless cat-loving women” comment, calling it a “sarcastic remark,” and used the topic to attack Democrats as “anti-family.”
“I know the media is going to attack me and want me to back down on this, Meghan, but I said, having a child, being a father, being a mother, it really does change the way you think in a pretty fundamental way,” Vance said on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” last week.
Psaki also pointed out that Vance said in July 2021 that parents “should have more ability to voice their opinion” at the polls than people without children.
“And he believes the vote of childfree people should be disregarded, and he has a particular hatred for childfree women who happen to own cats. But the truth is that J.D. Vance has delivered a lot of criticism to millions of people in this country,” Psaki said.
In an emailed statement to The Hill last week, Sen. Vance spokesman Taylor Van Kirk said the “left-wing media” has “twisted Sen. Vance’s words to create a false narrative about where he stands on issues.”
