Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance appeared to defend the near-total ban on abortion in Texas during a local news interview this week, saying he did not believe that rape or incest should necessarily be exceptions for the procedure.
“I think in Texas they’re trying to make it easier for unborn babies to be born,” Vance told Spectrum News’s Curtis Jackson in Columbus on Wednesday when asked about the Texas law. “There is a view, common among leaders of the Democratic Party, that babies deserve no legal protections in the womb. That is a common view in the Democratic Party and all I’m saying is that view’s wrong.”
When asked whether abortion laws should allow for exceptions for rape and incest, Vance said he believes that “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“At the end of the day, we’re talking about an unborn baby. What kind of society do we want to have? A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded?” Vance continued.
“My view on this has been very clear, and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong,” he added, maintaining that “it’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term” but “whether a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to society.”
“The question to me really is about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life,” he added.
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The interview was first highlighted by The Daily Beast. Vance’s press secretary Taylor Van Kirk reiterated to the outlet that Vance rejected “the entire premise of the question he was asked by the interviewer” regarding potential exceptions to abortion.
Vance’s comments come as a number of Republicans have remained quiet over Texas’s law, while others have embraced it. The law outlaws abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can take place as early as six weeks into pregnancy, and only makes exceptions for medical emergencies. Additionally, and most controversially, the law leaves enforcement to private citizens, who can sue doctors and anyone else they believe aided a person receiving an abortion.