JD Vance, Knower of Women, Says Women Care About ‘Normal Things,’ Not Abortion

Specifically, Vance told Fox News' Laura Ingraham that "suburban women" don't care about abortion because they care about "normal things." I don't know, caring about your access to reproductive health seems pretty normal???

By Kylie Cheung  |  August 15, 2024 | 12:07pm
Photo: Getty Images AbortionPolitics JD Vance
JD Vance, Knower of Women, Says Women Care About ‘Normal Things,’ Not Abortion

JD Vance, a noted creep who wants law enforcement to have access to women’s out-of-state abortion data, is checking in to definitively clarify for us what we care about. Unsurprisingly, Vance argued that women—specifically, the suburban women who could help decide the election—care about whatever Vance wants them to care about.

On Wednesday night, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham asked Vance about abortion. “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?”

A couple of things with Ingraham’s bullshit before we get into Vance’s bullshit: Please tell me what comfort “it’s not banned nationally” right now is to an Alabama woman who has to travel to Illinois for abortion care, or to a woman in Texas who can’t get urgent medical care for a nonviable, potentially life-threatening pregnancy because her doctor is too nervous about going to prison. Not to mention that we’ve all seen Project 2025 and its step-by-step details of how a Republican president could bypass Congress and quickly enact a national ban.

Nonetheless, Vance shrugged off the concerns Ingraham raised with all the callousness you’d expect of someone most commonly associated with the word “anti-woman” (and, incidentally, “weird”!) per the latest polling: “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 said. “They care about inflation, they care about the price of groceries, they care about public safety in the streets where their kids play.”

Living costs aren’t a separate issue from abortion: Seeking and being denied abortion care can push someone deeper into poverty. Meanwhile, the costs of traveling across state lines to access abortion care can bankrupt someone, as they pay for transportation, lodging, child care, and miss work. “It can set them back for a long time,” the abortion funding group Brigid Alliance’s Serra Sippel previously told Jezebel. “The short-sightedness of imposing these bans, the impact it has on the economic infrastructure when so many people are going to lose wages, lose jobs, lose housing—the ripple effect is massive.”

And I’d still argue that normal people care about whether the government can force them to give birth. And normal people certainly care about the wide-ranging ripple effects of the government being able to force them to give birth. One in four American women has an abortion at some point because no matter how ~suburban~ (which, when Vance and Ingraham say the word, clearly means rich or middle-class and white) you are, there are just things you can’t plan.

Despite Ingraham’s insistence that women simply don’t “understand” the law, it’s fairly clear Ingraham and Vance are the ones without a grasp on how abortion bans affect far more than just access to the procedure. Abortion bans dictate which medications people of “childbearing age” can get, including a common arthritis medication that’s now been deemed an “abortifacient” by some pharmacists. Abortion bans dictate the availability of prenatal care since OBGYNs are leaving states with bans in droves. Abortion bans certainly dictate the availability of emergency care for pregnant people, given the ambiguity of emergency exceptions and the threat of jail for doctors who violate them. And abortion bans can also dictate whether you’re jailed for miscarriage or a stillbirth. All of this is already happening. Under abortion bans, these are inescapable, day-to-day things people are forced to care about.

Vance’s awful abortion politics are well-documented, and this latest one-liner is sure to play well with the majority of suburban women who support abortion rights and are now being told they aren’t “normal” for caring. He’s previously argued against rape exceptions for abortion (“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he said in 2021), and argued the need for a national ban to stop “Black women” from Ohio from traveling to California for abortion. More recently, he’s tried to pivot to align with Trump’s bullshit, performative “leave it up to the states” approach, which counts on women to be, not “normal,” but rather, stupid.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, who largely commandeered the “Republicans are weird” line that’s been weighing so heavily on Vance, chimed in on Wednesday night. “It’s pretty normal to respect a woman’s right to make her own damn health care decisions,” Walz tweeted. Looking forward to their October 1 debate!

 
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