J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican senator whom former President Donald Trump has tapped to be his vice presidential running-mate, recently scrapped all mention of his anti-abortion stances from his campaign website.
The deletion of Vance’s views on abortion was first noticed by HuffPost senior politics reporter Jennifer Bendery, who published a tweet on Vance’s views earlier this week, using a screenshot taken from the senator’s site at the time.
Vance described himself as “100 percent pro-life” and called for “eliminating abortion” completely.
“This is no longer on JD Vance’s website,” Bendery said in a tweet on Tuesday.
In fact, as of Wednesday morning, Vance’s website is completely inaccessible — those seeking to go to jdvance.com are now forwarded to Trump’s official campaign website instead.
The transition is perhaps an expected one: Over the past few weeks, Vance has changed his public position on abortion to align with Trump’s latest stance, stating in a recent “Meet the Press” interview, for example, that he supports the Trump line that “most abortion policy is going to be decided by the states.” But Vance has previously crusaded for abortion bans — in 2022, he campaigned under the banner of “ban abortion,” and in 2022, he expressed opposition to exceptions in cases of rape and incest.
The change in Vance’s purported beliefs curiously occurred as speculation regarding him becoming Trump’s vice presidential nominee was heating up.
Earlier this year, Trump shifted his own views on abortion when it became increasingly clear they were unpopular.
Trump had reportedly considered supporting a nationwide ban on abortion at around 15 or 16 weeks of pregnancy. But he changed his stance after facing pushback, and now espouses a “states’ rights” belief, which still allows draconian anti-abortion policies to be enacted in many parts of the country.
Trump has sought to downplay his views on abortion, with his campaign saying in a memo to Republican National Committee (RNC) members who were drafting the party’s platform that “publishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent’s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters.”
But Trump’s past statements on abortion make it clear that he backs more restrictions — including punishments for people who undergo the procedure.
Following the Supreme Court’s overturn of federal abortion protections in 2022, Trump said he was “proud” of having appointed three of the conservative justices who ruled against keeping Roe v. Wade the standard. And as a candidate for president in 2016, Trump said that “there has to be some form of punishment” for a person who has had an abortion.
Trump and the Republican Party’s attempts to downplay their views on abortion are strategic — poll after poll shows that Americans support keeping abortion legal in all or most cases, and several states are planning to have referendum measures on the ballot this fall that will enshrine abortion rights in their constitutions.
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