He opposes no-fault divorce, including those who do so to leave abusive marriages. He’s compared abortion to slavery, supports a national abortion ban and rejects exceptions for rape – “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he said. He called women without children “miserable cat ladies” and villified working moms as bad parents who want to “shunt their kids into crap day care so they can enjoy more ‘freedom.’” For him, universal child care amounts to “class war against normal people.”
For a Republican Party yearning to appeal to women voters who left them in the 2020 presidential election and then walloped them at the ballot box after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade, someone with a track record of anti-women remarks and policy stances may seem an unlikely candidate to rise to the top of Trump’s list for vice president picks. And in a race that looks as if it will now feature a woman on the top of the opposing ticket, it might even border on a liability.
But that’s exactly what happened, as Trump announced as his running mate last week Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, a 39-year-old who rose to fame as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy.” He has served in the upper chamber of Congress for less than two years and was a self-proclaimed “Never Trump” guy before riding the former president’s coattails into his political career and quickly establishing himself as an ardent MAGA supporter and among Trump’s most loyal and vocal foot soldiers.
“If Donald Trump aimed to attract more women voters, selecting J.D. Vance as his vice presidential candidate was a particularly poor choice,” says Emily Martin, chief program officer at the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund. “Vance's track record on key issues for women voters is deeply concerning. He has previously endorsed a national abortion ban,........