JD Vance’s Opposition to Rape Exceptions to Abortion Bans Is Subject of Biting New Campaign Ad

The Biden-Harris campaign already called Vance "proudly anti-choice."

By Kylie Cheung | July 18, 2024 | 5:03pm

Photo: Getty Images Abortion JD Vance

JD Vance’s Opposition to Rape Exceptions to Abortion Bans Is Subject of Biting New Campaign Ad

When Hadley Duvall learned years ago that, at 12 years old, she had been impregnated by her stepfather, she says she was able to find comfort in one thing: “First thing that was told to me when I saw that positive pregnancy test was, you have options,” Duvall, who’s now 21, recounts in a new ad for the Biden-Harris reelection campaign that will air on Saturday. “If Roe v. Wade would have been overturned sooner, I wouldn’t have heard that and then it had me thinking, there’s someone who doesn’t get to hear that now.”

“Trump and JD Vance don’t care about women, they don’t care about girls in this situation,” Duvall concludes. This marks the Biden-Harris campaign’s first ad against Vance, who joined the Republican presidential ticket on Monday. Already, the campaign has called Vance “proudly anti-choice.”

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In 2021, Vance even argued against rape and incest exceptions for abortion bans: “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he told Spectrum News. In the new Biden-Harris ad, Duvall emphasizes how this position would further traumatize and possibly entrap rape victims like her. In 2022, Vance’s state of Ohio infamously saw a 10-year-old rape victim denied abortion care under the state’s ban, which is no longer in effect. (The child was forced to travel to Indiana for care.)

This isn’t Duvall’s first foray into politics: In 2023, she shared her story to help reelect Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, and is working with state legislators to try to add a rape exception to the state’s sweeping abortion ban. “I’m telling lawmakers, even if they know someone who’s a survivor—if they haven’t experienced this themselves, they still have no idea what we’ve been through,” Duvall told Jezebel in January. “It may not be today or tomorrow, but down the line, this could happen to someone you love. And if you can look them in the eye and tell them ‘You don’t deserve this medical procedure, even though your innocence was taken from you, your health is in danger’—I don’t know how they live with themselves.”

On Wednesday, when Vance spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, his remarks conspicuously excluded abortion altogether. There wasn’t even a single, vague reference to “life.” The RNC overall has been sparing in any mention of abortion, which sticks out like a sore thumb since they’ve been rabidly campaigning on banning abortion for years now. But this isn’t because the party has “softened” on abortion—it’s just because Republicans recognize the extreme electoral unpopularity of their bans.

Vance, who’s previously advocated for a national abortion ban in the grossest terms possible, hasn’t “softened” on abortion either. “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” he said in 2022 on a podcast with a prominent right-wing influencer. Vance then spewed the wildly racist conspiracy theory that Democratic donor George Soros would send private jets “to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California, and of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity.”

Vance went on to say that he supported “some federal response to prevent it from happening,” implying support for the policing of interstate abortion travel. He’s since backed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) proposed national 15-week abortion ban. He performatively walked back this support for a national ban earlier this month to align with Trump, who says abortion must be “left up to the states.” Earlier this week, the New York Times bought into that, inaccurately reporting that Vance “opposes a national abortion ban, saying the issue should now be left to the states.”

But Trump, Vance, and the Republican Party writ large support a national abortion ban, as outlined by Project 2025, whether they say this outright or not. The party platform, adopted last week, calls for the 14th Amendment to offer fetuses citizenship rights and enshrine fetal personhood. And as legal experts have already pointed out, Vance’s 2022 argument for a national ban is especially chilling, as it’s a direct response to constitutionally protected interstate abortion travel.

Since the end of Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion lawmakers and activists have been attempting to crack down on access to out-of-state abortion. Just last week, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to codify a federal right to interstate abortion travel. Last year, several counties in Texas enacted ordinances to block people from traveling on highways if their end destination is an out-of-state abortion clinic. States have passed bills to criminalize people who help minors seek abortion care out-of-state. Alabama’s attorney general said he can prosecute anyone who helps a pregnant person cross state lines for abortion as “criminal conspiracy.” And top anti-abortion activist Jonathan Mitchell is also teeing legal efforts to help Texas men harass ex-partners who travel out-of-state for abortion care. Now, Republicans have landed on a vice presidential nominee who wants to stop interstate abortion travel, too.

Vance’s more recent comments about abortion, after an abortion rights ballot measure succeeded in Ohio in November, have been even more disturbing: “There is something sociopathic about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that it is liberating to murder their own children,” he added. “So let’s keep fighting for our country’s children, and let’s find a way to win.”