Facing Vance, Dems hone in on abortion

Democrats are sharpening their attacks against former President Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), calling him an anti-abortion extremist and a Trump clone who will pursue a far-right agenda hostile to women.

Democrats think abortion is a key weakness for the Trump ticket and are eager to highlight Vance’s past comments and positions to draw a contrast between him and Vice President Harris.  

Immediately after Trump announced his choice, the Biden campaign held a press call with officials and surrogates to highlight what they describe as Vance’s extremism. 

“He’s proudly anti-choice and wants to take women back decades,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, who chairs President Biden’s reelection campaign.

“A Trump-Vance administration will jeopardize reproductive freedom in all 50 states,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said on a call Monday. “This isn’t an abstract idea; we know they have no plans to stop at overturning Roe.” 

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been holding press conferences in Milwaukee all week to call attention to Trump’s ties to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the conservative movement’s detailed plan for how the next Republican president should wield power.

The document calls for limiting abortion pills, preventing Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds and for the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its approval of abortion drugs, among other abortion-related proposals.

On Wednesday, the DNC featured reproductive rights advocate Amanda Zurawski, who sued Texas over its abortion ban in 2022 after she said she nearly died when doctors in the state delayed giving her a medically necessary abortion.

“I believe that health care decisions belong between a woman and her doctor, but if Donald Trump and JD Vance are elected, they will make my devastating story, the stories I’ve heard across the country, the reality for far too many more American women,” Zurawski said.  

Trump has been distancing himself from Project 2025, claiming he knows nothing about it, as Democrats try to make it a liability for the GOP ticket.  

He’s also aware of the political vulnerabilities around abortion and has been trying to balance the realities of sounding more moderate on the issue while also appealing to the right-wing base.

Trump has settled on the position that abortion policy is up to the states, though he still takes credit for ending Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to the procedure. 

While Trump has walked a fine line on abortion, Vance has been a proud opponent of abortion rights throughout his political career. He was given an A+ ranking by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a prominent anti-abortion group.

He has since been trying to moderate his remarks and align himself closer to Trump, but Vance’s record gives Democrats plenty of fuel for their attacks.  

“Vance’s rhetoric and positions have been so extreme that he kind of puts Mike Pence to shame,” said Matt Bennett, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way.  

Vance applauded the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supported Texas’s ban on abortion, which does not allow exceptions other than cases where the mother’s life is at risk.  

In a 2021 interview, he indicated he did not support any exceptions, even for rape or incest. But in his 2022 Senate race, Vance said during a debate, “I’ve always believed in reasonable exceptions.” 

He campaigned against Ohio’s 2023 ballot measure that guaranteed the right to abortion, and voiced support for a nationwide abortion ban at 15 weeks, with certain exceptions.

Perhaps as a nod to that vulnerability, abortion has barely been mentioned so far during this week’s Republican National Convention. Vance did not talk about it all during his speech Wednesday night, his first after being named to the ticket. 

After it was long a staple of GOP politics, much of the Republican Party is now embracing Trump’s reluctance to take an overt stance on abortion: The party’s formal platform doesn’t explicitly call for a national ban, nor does it explicitly call for legislation to give a fetus equal rights. 

Democrats are trying to go on offense and shift the focus away from ongoing concerns about Biden’s fitness for office, but it’s not clear if the attacks will break through the noise.

Bennett said that by elevating Vance, Trump has now taken ownership of his positions, which Democrats will hammer until November. While there are a lot of potential distractions right now, he said it won’t last.

“What is happening right now in the last two weeks with the assassination attempt, all the drama around Biden, I think that has drowned out everything,” Bennett said. “But we’re going to get back to questions around the future. And abortion will be a top-three issue for sure.”