Ohio Sen. JD Vance acknowledged during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate that Republicans have a believability problem on abortion. It’s a notable admission, given that he and his running mate are asking voters to trust that they won’t enact a national abortion ban after the demise of Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court precedent that the GOP swore was safe, until it wasn’t.
Vance said during his debate against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that the GOP has “got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us.” He then claimed that Trump believes the proper way to handle the issue is to “let the individual states make their abortion policy.”
It’s not the first time Trump and Vance have downplayed the chances of a national ban.
Trump himself fired off a social media post during the debate that stressed this talking point in capital letters. “EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT,” he wrote, “BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!).”
It’s not the first time Trump and Vance have downplayed the chances of a national ban. But people have zero reason to trust them: A federal abortion ban is absolutely on the table. From the top of the presidential ticket on down, Republicans are using condescending language eerily similar to what conservatives said in past elections: that Democrats and women, especially, are fear-mongering about a federal ban and are being hysterical.
At a Sept. 23 rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said that “all [Democrats] can talk about is abortion and it really no longer pertains" because, he claims, abortion is a state issue and “a vote of the people.” In a bit of wishcasting, Trump added that if he wins, women “will no longer be thinking about abortion.” That line was a rehash of another deranged, all-caps Truth Social post from three days earlier — his repetition of this message shows how desperate he is for voters to believe the lie that abortion access won’t get worse if they elect him.
During the presidential debate in September, Trump told moderator Linsey Davis that he “won’t have to” veto a federal ban, because it would never pass Congress. That pat dismissal came after another answer in which Trump said Vance didn’t know his stance on a nationwide law, and twice declined to say he’d veto a ban if it came to his desk.
Since that debate, Vance has parroted the line that congressional action was highly unlikely and really dialed up the dismissiveness —stopping just short of calling women crazy. He told NBC News’ Kristen Welker that a federal abortion ban was “kind of a ridiculous hypothetical,” adding that it would get about 10 votes in the Senate. When pressed by Welker, Vance said that Trump “thinks it’s ridiculous to talk about vetoing a piece of legislation that isn’t going to come before the president in the first place.”
Two years ago, a nearly 50-year precedent Republicans had argued was safe was overturned. Now, women are bleeding in hospital parking lots.
Ohio GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno made explicit what Vance kept implicit: At a Sept. 20 town hall, Moreno said suburban women are “crazy” for being single issue voters on abortion. Other Republicans have stuck to minimizing voters’ concerns. Trump ally and battleground member of Congress, Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna claimed: “The Supreme Court said, as a federal legislator, that my opinion on the matter doesn’t really matter.” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., made a similar argument. Nowhere did the court say that Congress can’t pass abortion laws. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, suggested that such a bill wouldn’t pass: “Thinking about the politics, it doesn’t seem like that’s really on the table.”
All this dodging is reminiscent of conservatives’ dismissive reassurances in years past when they said Roe would never be overturned. Then-Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., notoriously said in 2018 that women protesting the Brett Kavanaugh nomination were engaging in “hysteria.” It was “absurd,” he argued, to suggest that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe and women would die as a result. Supreme Court architect Leonard Leo told Fox News even before Kavanaugh was chosen that Democrats only talked about the fall of Roe as a “scare tactic” to mobilize base voters.
Trump himself famously claimed in a September 2020 debate that neither Joe Biden nor anyone watching could possibly know how his nominee Amy Coney Barrett would rule on Roe. “There’s nothing happening there,” Trump said. “You don’t know her view.” (This is the same man who, in 2016, said he would only appoint anti-abortion justices and that Roe would be overturned “automatically.”) Just months after that debate, the court took up an abortion case out of Mississippi and, about a year later, Roe was gone — with Barrett voting to overturn it.
Another telling debate moment, about the very meaning of the word “ban,” epitomized the Republicans’ shell game. When the moderators asked Vance about his past support for a 15-week abortion ban, he claimed the proposal wasn’t a ban but rather a “minimum national standard.” Maybe Trump and Vance believe “ban” means a total abortion ban but make no mistake: A federal ban at any gestation would override state laws, in direct contradiction to their “states’ rights” argument. Even more chilling, a second Trump administration could also enact a national ban by enforcing the 19th-century Comstock Act, which could ban abortion pills nationwide, if not all procedures.
Two years ago, a nearly 50-year precedent Republicans had argued was safe was overturned. Now, women are bleeding in hospital parking lots, losing fallopian tubes and, yes, dying. Obscenely yet predictably, they’re trying to tell women reporters and women voters across the country that everything is fine but we know it’s not. Vance is right that people don’t trust Republicans on abortion and they shouldn’t.