Vance’s criticism of Kamala Harris and childless women mobilizes Democratic voters

The ultra-conservative views on moral issues of the Republican vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, go so far as to request the withdrawal of the right to vote from people who do not have any children and, by extension, to consider Kamala Harris, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, “incapable” of performing such a role because she has not given birth. The misogynistic remark, taken from a 2021 interview but which social media has resurrected and made viral after Joe Biden withdrew from the race, included another trite cliché: that childless women like her try to remedy their frustration by surrounding themselves with cats. The pushback on social networks has been immediate, with funny and indignant campaigns in favor of “childless cat ladies.” From actress Jennifer Aniston to grassroots women’s organizations, Democratic women have come out in force in support of Harris, and the controversy has reached prime-time television.

Vance’s comments fit into his conservative worldview, which is completely opposed to abortion even in cases of incest or rape, but also to other reproductive health issues such as in vitro fertilization. Childless Americans, the Republican once declared, must face the consequences and the reality and not have “nearly an equal voice” in democracy, being, in his view, handicapped by the lack of offspring. “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. [...] Doesn’t this mean that non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how our democracy functions? Yes, absolutely.”

Actress Jennifer Aniston, a well-known Democrat, has strongly criticized Vance for these old comments, which the Republican would probably have avoided now: the huge mobilization in support of Harris after Biden’s withdrawal has frightened Trump’s team, which in recent days has called for restraint in criticism of the Democratic candidate to avoid a boomerang effect; which is to say, that personal attacks automatically become a flood of votes for her. But social media has worked the magic of resurrecting an old and forgotten clip to embarrass the new star of the Republican Party.

“Miserable” lives

In that interview, given to Tucker Carlson, the former star host of Fox News, Vance, a clean-shaven senator and the best-selling author of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, spoke disparagingly about the country being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States,” Aniston wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day,” Aniston wrote in her post. “I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”

Last month, Ohio Senator Vance voted to block legislation proposed by Democrats to guarantee access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.

Harris is stepmother to two children from her husband Doug Emhoff’s first marriage. The two attended the Democratic inauguration in January 2021 and are close to the vice president. “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like cole and I?” Ella Emhoff, 25, wrote on social media about her and her brother Cole, 29, and their family relationship with their father’s wife.

In his conversation with Carlson on Fox, Vance lamented that the United States was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”(an argument often used by Donald Trump, but without the feline allusions). Vance also took aim at other prominent Democrats, mentioning Pete Buttigieg and AOC [the initials of the progressive lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. The latter, a representative from New York, does not have children, but Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, welcomed two children born via surrogacy with his husband shortly after the interview.

Following the Supreme Court’s repeal in June 2022 of federal constitutional protection of the right to abortion, the Roe v. Wade doctrine, the ban has become major political ammunition, first in the November 2022 midterm elections—the voluntary termination safeguard allowed the Democrats a better-than-expected result—and then in the 2024 presidential campaign. And of all the senior officials in the Democratic administration, no one has embodied that fight and, by extension, the staunch defense of the sexual and reproductive health rights of Americans, quite like Kamala Harris.

Women’s reproductive rights are at the forefront of this presidential election. Harris is militant and very eloquent in their defense — it has been one of the driving forces of her vice presidency — and that could widen the gender gap among voters and benefit the Democrats. Women voters could be the barricade between Trump and that dictatorship that the Republican announced for the hypothetical first day of his term.

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