Weird JD Vance says that he and creepy Donald Trump do not want a federal abortion ban, no doubt because it is highly unpopular. But that is not what their most enthusiastic backers are saying. And weird Vance himself has been quite clear that he likes the idea.
JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.
“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.”
…Vance continued: “And, and it’s like, if that happens, do you need some federal response to prevent it from happening? Because it’s really creepy. And I’m pretty sympathetic to that actually. So, you know, how hopefully we get to a point where Ohio bans abortion in California and the Soroses of the world respect it.”
…But in January 2023, Vance signed on to a letter urging the Department of Justice to use the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law, to ban the mailing of abortion pills nationwide. Since Roe’s fall, anti-abortion activists have begun claiming that the Comstock Act remains good law and can be used to enforce a federal abortion ban. Project 2025, a wish list for a conservative administration written by the influential thinktank Heritage Foundation, reiterates this argument.
I wish someone would ask weird Vance how he would prevent women from going to a different state for an abortion in the absence of a federal ban. Will there be checkpoints at state borders to stop all women leaving in order to give them a pregnancy check? And if they are found to be pregnant, stop them upon re-entry to see if they are still pregnant?
Here is the background to the above ad.
This is an advert from the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group, presenting a dark vision of the future for millions of American women if Donald Trump defeats Kamala Harris in the presidential election and criminalises abortion nationwide.
But its target audience includes another crucial group of voters: conservative men.
“Dobbs Dads” – named after the supreme court’s Dobbs decision, which in 2022 ended the constitutional right to abortion – are suburban gen X and millennial fathers angered by the prospect of “big government” making choices for their wives’ and daughters’ reproductive healthcare needs.
…Trygve Olson, a senior adviser at the Lincoln Democracy Institute, said: “The Dobbs dads tend to be millennial. They are more likely to be college-educated white males and they’re disproportionately girl dads. Some of them are pro-life; they’re conservatives. Their conservatism is grounded in, ‘I don’t want government telling me what to do.’”
Olson characterised the thinking of many such voters as: “I would hope my daughter’s never having to face that choice but, if they were, I don’t want some theocrat or government official making that decision. I would hope that my daughter would come to me. I’m trying to raise her with integrity. I view my role as protector. I don’t want government making that decision any more than I want the government telling me what I can grow on my land or what kind of shotgun I can own.”
The “State Line” ad, warning of a national abortion ban under Project 2025, a radical policy blueprint from a rightwing thinktank, racked up half a million views on YouTube in two days. Olson, who grew up in the battleground state of Wisconsin, continued: “Being a girl dad kind of changes your perspective because you can empathise with a lot of things they go through.”
Cutesy labels like ‘Dobbs dads’ for specific demographic groups have become a thing in every election season, such as ‘Soccer moms’, ‘Starbucks moms, ‘waitress moms’, and ‘Walmart moms’. They grate on me but seem to be inevitable.
People need to be reminded that an abortion ban wouldn’t just burden younger women and teenage girls who don’t want to have any babies. It will also burden parents who already have kids, and either don’t want more, can’t afford more, or can no longer safely bear children.
Maybe the Lincoln folks should do another version of that ad with a middle-aged or early-middle-aged husband and wife, instead of a father and teenage daughter. Because it can, and will, happen to them too.
“Dobbs Dad” makes me think of the Subgenius icon J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, an archetypal yet friendly patriarch.
Whoever came up with that “D Dad” alliteration must be one of those 21st-century-native whippersnappers.
Arrest them and put them in prison until they give birth.
This is already done in a lot of places.
Some states will arrest and lock up pregnant women caught with drugs or a positive drug test.
They stay there at least until they give birth.
This is what forced birthing looks like.
Of course, nonwhite women are way overrepresented in this particular population.
JD Vance is a sick in the head weirdo and a loon.
OK, it is 2024. Abortion is legal in Blue states and illegal in Red GOP states. So, where is that Soros Abortion Airline these days?
That never happened. Vance makes up something false once again.
What is true is that the Blue states support the Red states. Again.
Women who need abortions in Red states travel all the time to Blue states.
Since Roe versus Wade was overturned, the number of abortions in the USA has gone up, not down.
The only ones this ban affects are young and poor women who are unable to travel. Nonwhites are as usual, overrepresented among the forced to give birth group.
Even if there was a total nationwide ban on abortion, it still wouldn’t stop women from getting abortions. There is already a huge DIY movement.
And, the rich will fly to Europe for an abortion and some shopping.
The middle class will travel to Canada and Mexico for an abortion and do some shopping.
Leaving the poor, many young, many nonwhite, to risk an illegal abortion or…be forced to give birth
Misleading quotation from the Guardian piece, and uncritically accepted.
“This is an advert from the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group” is how they are described, but:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lincoln_Project)
Basically, its primary purpose is to be anti-Trump.
Most Americans are familiar with the Lincoln Project.
They are non-partisan, and obviously pro-democracy.
Insinuating that others are gullible and uncritically accepted that they are pro-democracy is nonsense. The US has never had to deal with a charismatic grifter who wants to subvert democracy, so the fact that they formed an anti- trump PAC is not damning evidence of nefarious motives. That IS democracy in action.
I’m always taken aback when men say stuff like this. So you couldn’t empathize with women until one shared your DNA? Why? What in your brain was blocking you from empathizing with women? And don’t you think maybe that’s a problem?
The Guardian interviews US voters;
“Former Trump Supporter Admits She’s ‘Actually Afraid’ Of His Possible Mental Illness”
-The weirdness was always there but his decline has made it obvious to even longtime Republicans.
Trump has allied himself with the most regressive elements in politics (plus financial interests). When this rambling individual is elevated to the status of messiah by Fox and other right-wing media the cognitive dissonance finally get too large to be ignored.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Oa8Nm0POyc8
(as the number of comments is limited I apologise beforehand for any spelling errors)
@7, Silentbob: I agree, it’s such a sign of cognitive dissonance when men who wouldn’t otherwise spit on a woman if she was on fire, then have a daughter and their tune changes (at least for that daughter). I think it’s a conservative trait that they can’t empathize with anything unless something happens directly to them or someone related to them.
@4, raven, I’m not at all surprised that JD Vance is continuing to lie about abortion. He and Trump are also insisting Democrats (and D-led states) approve of “abortion AFTER birth”…which is homicide. It’s just more projection because under Republican laws, a woman must carry a known genetically doomed fetus to birth and watch it die immediately after birth because its birth defects are not compatible with life.
Is there anything that JD and his boss don’t lie about?
They are typical in that they don’t know anything about the female reproductive system except that they find menstruation icky and shameful.
Even if every pregnancy was wanted, we will still need abortion to be safe and legal. Sometimes pregnancy goes wrong and the only recourse is an emergency abortion to save the life of the mother.
Less than 1% of pregnancies will result in a fetus who will not live due to rare genetic issues, but the testing that reveals these abnormalities doesn’t happen until long past the first trimester when abortion is no longer discretionary. What mother wants to continue a pregnancy that will only lead to torture for her fetus as its central nervous system develops and it can feel pain?
Abortion is mercy, as the fetus won’t survive after birth.
Being forced to carry a dead fetus until labor happens naturally is another horrific result of banning abortions.
It’s also a good way to kill the mother.
We are not going back to 1800s obstetrics, when pregnancy and childbirth was the primary cause of death for adult women.
#6 Tethys
No sorry you are wrong. Lincoln Project’s original founders were Log Cabin Republicans. Many of the people running it today are conservative and just as bonkers as most Republicans if not more so. They are enemies of democracy and liberalism. The Guardian was sloppy, and poster John Morales is correct.
You should not suppose that just because they are attacking Trump that they want anything to do with democracy. They don’t.
The enemy of your enemy is your enemy’s enemy. No more, no less.
A realization hit me awhile back and I can’t forget the comparison.
My friends and I play roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons on the weekends. For a couple hours we pretend we’re elves, dwarves, and that wiggling our fingers and saying just the right gibberish will let us toss around fireballs and lightning bolts. And then we stop and go home.
Conservatives like to fantasize about saving thousands of babies. But to do that they get very fuzzy about where along the development cycle a fetus or child is, and that pregnancies happen in a figurative vacuum where all other factors and considerations are absent. In fact, the real world is entirely absent from their fantasy aside from one factor: the start of something living. This makes it pure fantasy or at best a strange fetish. And they do not go home after they’re done fantasizing about this. They try to get into your home and impose their fantasy and all its consequences on you and everyone you know.
Every good roleplayed knows you don’t involve random people, who have not agreed to participate, in your fantasy. Even young children can grasp this. Where along the way did these conservatives forget this?
Lanir @ 12
Unfortunately the conservative bubble left consensus reality when Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch started Fox News.