A report by a right-wing think tank proposing sweeping restrictions on abortions and fertility treatments was backed by JD Vance years before he became a fervent supporter of Donald Trump and eventually his vice-presidential running mate, known for his derisive views on childless women.
In 2017, months into Trump’s presidency, Vance wrote the foreword to the Culture and Opportunity Indexa collection of essays by conservative authors for the Heritage Foundation that included ideas to encourage women to have children earlier and promote the revival of the “traditional” family structure.
The essays praised the rise of state laws restricting abortion rights and included arguments that the practice should become “unthinkable” in the US — a hardline stance that Democrats now say is the agenda of Trump and Vance, whom they accuse of harboring an intention to impose a national ban following a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe V Wade and struck down the federal right to abort a pregnancy.
The report also includes a rehearsal lamenting the spread of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments, which the author attributes as reasons why women delay having children and prioritize higher education over starting a family.
IVF has become an issue in the November presidential race after Trump… saying last week that he was in favor of the treatment being covered by government funds or by private health insurance companies, a stance that appears to be at odds with many Republicans, including Vance, who was one of 47 Republican senators who voted in June against a bill aimed at expanding access to the treatment.
The report’s contents provide new insights into the philosophy that inspired some of Vance’s later incendiary public statements, including saying that the United States is run by “childless cat ladies” and that he is disturbed by the thought of professors who do not have children.
He also has suggested that childless people are more likely to become “more sociopathic.”
The 2017 report came a year after Vance’s bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy was published, and also after he made a series of statements denouncing Trump, whom the US senator called a “cultural heroine” and speculated could become “America’s Hitler.” He also described himself as “a guy who would never support Trump.”
His foreword, however, contains hints that Vance’s thoughts on the then-president were already evolving.
“We all seem to be waking up to the fact that things are not what they used to be,” he wrote. “When President Trump has talked about the country being locked in a losing game of international trade or denounced the carnage on so many American streets, he has earned criticism for painting an overly pessimistic view of his own country. Yet that pessimism struck a chord with many Americans.
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“The question for those who care about the future of the country is not whether the negativity is justified, but why the negativity inspired so many at the polls.”
Vance’s views finally came full circle and Trump… Approved his successful 2022 U.S. Senate campaign in Ohio.
The foreword to the 2017 report also appears to be one of Vance’s earliest known links to the Heritage Foundation, a think tank responsible for producing Project 2025, a controversial and sweeping plan to remake American government and society in a conservative image. Trump has repudiated the 922-page document, but the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has described it as an attack on basic liberties and a typical example of what awaits us under a second Trump presidency.
