J.D. Vance Urged the Right to ‘Go to War’ With People Who Don’t Want Kids
Maybe you aren’t financially stable, maybe getting financially stable is the priority, maybe the cost of living is already too high. Perhaps you just don’t want kids? Well, then you should strap on your helmet: J.D. Vance wants to go war with you.
In a 2021 Interview with The Federalist’s radio show, Vance declared unequivocally that it’s time for the right to “go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country.”
“There was this ridiculous effort by millennial feminist writers to talk about why having kids was not a good thing, why they were glad they didn’t have kids, and even encouraging people who had had children to talk about why they regretted having children,” Vance said. “Everybody can be an exceptional mother and father. Not everybody can be an exceptional journalist at The New York Times. And not enough people have accepted that if they put their entire life’s meaning into their [credentials] …. You’re going to be a sad, lonely, pathetic person and you’re going to know it internally. So you’re going to project it onto people who have actually built something more meaningful with their lives.”
It’s a consistent theme for Vance, who was elected to an Ohio Senate seat in 2022 and chosen earlier this month to serve as former President Donald Trump’s running mate. In 2021, the Hillbilly Elegy author complained that America is being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable [with] their own lives and the choices that they’ve made,” clarifying that he was referring, in part, to Vice President Kamala Harris, who has two stepchildren through marriage. (Asked about those comments last week, Vance responded: “I’ve got nothing against cats.)
Vance, like many natalist Republicans these days, has praised the policies of Hungarian Viktor Orbán — which couple anti-immigrant policies with tax breaks for parents of large families — as a model for the United States. He’s said that families without children should pay higher taxes than those with kids because we should “reward the things that we think are good” and “punish the things that we think are bad.”
But while Vance would like to posture as a pro-childbirth, pro-family Republican, he has consistently attacked and opposed policies aimed at easing the financial burdens on American parents.
In 2021, Vance tweeted, “‘Universal day care’ is class war against normal people.” During his 2022 campaign, Vance opposed President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation, which included provisions to reauthorize the expanded Child Tax Credit, and provide paid family leave and universal pre-K. Vance specifically criticized the legislation for providing “a massive subsidy if you send your kids to child care,” arguing that “if you want to have your kids raised in the home by a mom or dad, or you want to rely on grandparents, you get nothing.”
As a senator, Vance voted against legislation aimed at codifying the right to fertility treatments and IVF.
Since Trump selected him as his vice presidential nominee, Vance has quickly cultivated a reputation as a “weird” guy, due to his far-right social views and habit of offering radical commentary in friendly right-wing settings — like The Federalist’s radio show.
Rolling Stone previously reported on a series of jarring comments Vance made on a podcast hosted by reactionary Australian Aimee Terese, in which he endorsed a national abortion ban using the most caustic language possible.
“I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” Vance said in the 2022 podcast, arguing that regulating abortion at the state level wouldn’t work because people could still travel freely to other states. “Let’s say Roe v. Wade is overruled,” he said. “Ohio bans abortion … you know, in let’s say 2024. And then, every day, George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus 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.”
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