Former President Donald Trump and his new running mate , Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), will have a tough battle ahead on the issue of abortion access heading into the 2024 general election this November.
President Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates have pushed to make the election a referendum on abortion rights following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Trump, who has been called the “most pro-life president in American history,” has lauded that he appointed three of the six judges that ruled to overturn Roe but has also not supported the most hardline positions of anti-abortion conservatives in the Republican Party base.
Anti-abortion advocates took a stiff blow in recent weeks with the softening of the Republican Party platform on the issue of abortion as well, with the language taking on a pragmatism characteristic of Trump’s party leadership.
In recent weeks, Vance also mellowed his previously staunch stance on abortion in a move that many believe was intended to make him more closely aligned with the head of the Republican Party.
Still, Biden campaign Chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in statement Monday that Vance "is someone who supports banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors."
No national ban on abortion
During his Senate campaign in October 2022, Vance said he was “totally fine” with “some minimum national standard” on abortion restrictions in the immediate aftermath of the overturning of Roe.
Vance was unclear during the October 2022 debate, however, about the extent of those national-level restrictions, saying that voters in different states will have varying preferences on abortion limits.
“Ohio's going to want to have different abortion laws than California, than Texas,” Vance said on the debate stage against Democrat challenger then-Rep. Tim Ryan.
Trump has emphatically supported state-determined abortion policy throughout the 2024 election cycle, saying several times that constitutional law experts on the issue had wanted abortion policy returned to the states since Roe was decided in 1973.
Vance’s record on Ohio abortion politics
Vance was also a vocal opponent of the abortion rights amendment in Ohio that passed in the November 2023 election, speaking against the amendment during the state’s March for Life gathering in the capital, Columbus.
“What does it say about a society, what does it say about our country when we tell young moms and young dads that everything comes before their own children?” he said. “If there’s somebody out there telling you that what’s in your best interest is to get rid of your own baby, they do not have your best interests at heart. They are not on your team.”
Vance stressed during that speech that most women do not choose to have an abortion because they do not want their child. Rather, he said, women are often coerced or convinced to have an abortion by the child’s father, life circumstances such as pursuing a degree, or lacking material resources to raise a child alone.
Exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother
Both Trump and Vance during the 2024 campaign cycle have expressed strong support for states setting abortion policy and backed exceptions to abortion restrictions in the cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger.
In 2021, Vance made the statement that “two wrongs don’t make a right” with respect to abortion in the context of rape and incest.
“My view on this has been very clear, and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong,” Vance said when pressed on the issue of exceptions in 2021. “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.”
During the October 2022 debate with Ryan, however, Vance clarified that he has "always believed in reasonable exceptions” to abortion prohibitions.
Abortion pill
The Ohio senator drew significant ire from anti-abortion conservatives this month following an interview with Meet the Press in which he expressed support for access to the abortion pill, mifepristone.
The former president tried to largely remain silent on the issue of mifepristone access during the campaign even as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an attempt to undo the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug.
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But in late June , Trump said that he agreed with the court’s decision to uphold the FDA’s approval and he “will not block” access to the pill.
Mifepristone is responsible for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States as of 2023.
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