Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance said Sunday that former President Donald Trump would veto a national ban on abortion if reelected, a promise that drew immediate pushback from Democrats, including Bay State Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren speaking Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press immediately after a segment featuring Vance, said “American women are not stupid and we are not going to trust the futures of our daughters and granddaughters to two men who have openly bragged about blocking access to abortion for women all across this country.”
Vance set out Trump’s view that decisions surrounding abortion are best left up to the states.
“Donald Trump’s view is that we want the individual states and their individual cultures and their unique political sensibilities to make these decisions because we don’t want to have a nonstop federal conflict over this issue,” Vance said.
Trump, according to Vance, would veto a nationwide abortion law that landed on his desk.
“I think he would. He said that explicitly, that he would,” Vance said.
“God have mercy on this nation if this is now the position of what was the Pro-Life Party,” wrote Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in a post Sunday linking to a story on Vance’s comments.
Warren says she doesn’t believe Vance, suggesting that if Trump won reelection he would in fact move to further restrict abortion, even without Congress.
Warren referenced the Comstock Act, an 1873 law which outlaws use of the mail in moving “obscene” material.
“With the right person that they put into the Department of Justice and one of their extremist judges out in the world – they can actually ban all access to abortion all across this country. And understand when I say ‘ban access to abortion,’ I don’t mean with, ‘Oh, exceptions for rape or incest or a 16-week ban.’ I mean ban it for every woman, any time she needs it,” she said.
Vance said that’s simply not the case.
“I think it’s important to step back and say, ‘What has Donald Trump actually said on the abortion question, and how is it different from what Kamala Harris and Democrats have said?’ Donald Trump wants to end this culture war over this particular topic,” he said. “If California wants to have a different abortion policy from Ohio, then Ohio has to respect California, and California has to respect Ohio.”
Trump, for his part, has said that he is proud to have appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices responsible for the end of Roe v. Wade, and claimed instead that everyone wanted to see the 1973 court decision thrown out.
“Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives, wanted Roe v. Wade TERMINATED, and brought back to the States,” he said via his Truth Social media platform, capitalization his.
