Tim Walz’s Personal IVF Story Intensely Foils JD Vance’s ‘Childless Cat Lady’ Tirades
Walz and his wife struggled to have children for eight years before conceiving both their children through IVF. Vance, meanwhile, has cast “childless” adults as his no. 1 political enemy.
Photos: Getty Images Politics JD Vance
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has officially selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, a decision that’s somehow pleased both Nancy Pelosi and online leftists. And while everyone on Harris’ shortlist would’ve easily outshined alleged couch-fucker, JD Vance, Walz seems specifically made in a lab to be the foil to the deeply unpopular GOP vice presidential nominee. For starters, they’ve both aggressively branded themselves around being from the Midwest—but Vance touts this by weaponizing soda-based culture wars, while Walz does so by ensuring all public schoolchildren can eat free meals. Walz even seems to have clinched his spot on the ticket by pioneering the “JD Vance is weird” attack—kudos to a real hater!
And then there’s Vance’s obsession with “childless cat ladies,” who he’s spent the better part of his nascent political career smearing as “sociopathic” and undeserving of voting rights. Now that Walz has joined the Democratic ticket and will soon face off against Vance on the debate stage, Walz’s personal story of fertility struggles and relying on IVF to have his two children is receiving renewed attention. In February, when the Alabama Supreme Court all but outlawed IVF (before the legislature intervened) and Senate Republicans, who include Vance, blocked efforts to enshrine a federal right to fertility services, Walz wrote on Twitter, “Gwen and I have two beautiful children because of reproductive health care like IVF. This issue is deeply personal to our family and so many others.” He continued, “Don’t let these guys get away with this by telling you they support IVF when their handpicked judges oppose it.”
Gwen and I have two beautiful children because of reproductive health care like IVF. This issue is deeply personal to our family and so many others.
Don’t let these guys get away with this by telling you they support IVF when their handpicked judges oppose it.
Speaking to Minnesota’s Star Tribune in March, Walz recounted the day his wife called him crying, after several unsuccessful IVF attempts. “I said, ‘Not again,’” Walz recalled. “She said, ‘No, I’m pregnant.’ It’s not by chance that we named our daughter Hope.” Walz shared his story as Minnesota Democrats tried to pass a bill requiring insurance companies to cover IVF. The bill failed to get enough support in the legislature, as Republican leaders somehow called it “divisive,” and it was placed on hold until next year’s session. Then, on July 25—World IVF—Walz tweeted at Vance, calling out his anti-IVF beliefs as a “direct attack” on Walz’s family and “so many others.” “Even if you’ve never gone through the hell of infertility, someone you know has,” he wrote. “When Gwen and I were having trouble getting pregnant, the anxiety and frustration blotted out the sun.”
Speaking of, let’s revisit some of Vance’s comments on childless people, shall we? “We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats… by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” he rambled to Tucker Carlson in 2021. “If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)], the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children—and how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America. pic.twitter.com/3DJY3pQTGe
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2024
In a different interview, also from 2021, Vance said people who don’t have children are “sociopathic,” “psychotic,” and “deranged,” and can’t be trusted with political leadership. In perhaps his most unhinged remarks on the subject, while addressing a conservative group that same year, Vance suggested childless adults should lose suffrage. He asserted that they should “face the consequences and the reality” and not be accorded “nearly the same voice” in democracy, adding, “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children.”
After Vance’s resurfaced comments went viral last month, Jennifer Aniston, who disclosed her personal fertility struggles and unsuccessful IVF journey in 2022, personally spoke out against Vance on social media. “All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too,” Aniston wrote. Vance responded about as shamelessly as one possibly could, calling Aniston “disgusting” for rhetorically alluding to his daughter—without any apology for calling people who don’t have kids “miserable,” “childless cat ladies.” Given the chance to apologize to childless adults on Megyn Kelly’s podcast last month, Vance declined and apologized, instead, to cats: “I’ve got nothing against cats. I’ve got nothing against dogs. … People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not the substance of what I actually said.”
It bears worth repeating that smearing adults who don’t have kids for any reason is unacceptable and—as Walz himself has aptly made the case for—downright weird. It’s an innately gendered attack that reinforces the right’s idea that women’s existential purpose is motherhood, which they seemingly want to force upon us through a combination of abortion bans and creepy rants from Vance. And attacking childless adults holds an added dimension of cruelty for people who, like Walz, want children but aren’t able to, or who struggle for a long time to conceive.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz has signed several laws to bolster reproductive rights in the state, which has become an important refuge for abortion seekers in the Midwest. By contrast, while Vance recently came out in support of Trump’s performative position to leave abortion “up to the states,” he’s previously called for a national abortion ban—specifically because he feared “Black women” in Ohio could too easily travel to California for abortions. He’s also rejected rape exceptions for abortion bans because “two wrongs don’t make a right.” In 2023, Vance signed a letter calling for law enforcement to have broad access to pregnant people’s medical records, in case they try to leave a state for an abortion.
I’m as disenchanted with the American political machine as anyone, really, but I’ll say it: I look forward to seeing these two on the debate stage.