The Boston Globe | Trump’s running mate thinks even less of women than he does

By Yvonne Abraham | Originally Published by the Boston Globe

You’ve got to hand it to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: Though it seemed impossible, he’s found a running mate who thinks as little — or maybe even less — of women than he does.

JD Vance is like Project 2025 on legs, a walking blueprint for an extremist second Trump term, a man — like the terrifying, 900-page plan for a second Trump presidency — who says the quiet parts out loud.

There’s not enough space here to lay out the entirety of the Ohio senator’s nightmarish worldview on women, but here are some of the highlights:

He is an anti-choice extremist who supports a federal abortion ban and opposes exceptions for rape and incest, though he has tried to walk that last position back lately. He has derided the Democratic Party as being taken over by people who don’t have children and accused the party of being “explicitly anti-child and anti-family” as a result.

The country “is run by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” he said in 2021, singling out Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. He sees journalists the same way, calling them miserable, “psychotic” people who left it too late to have children, who now want everyone else to be miserable too, and who “have too much power.”

Vance believes women who have not given birth should not be running things because having no biological offspring means they cannot be invested in the nation’s future.

He trucks in creepy, pro-natalist, eugenicist views about those who share his conservative values needing to have more children to take back their civilization. And he has suggested people with children should pay lower taxes, and have more votes, than those without.

He wants more women to be stay-at-home mothers: “‘Universal day care’ is class war against normal people,” he once posted on X, formerly Twitter. And he thinks women staying in marriages at all costs — even abusive ones — is a good thing.

This guy makes Trump — a misogynist who has boasted about sexually assaulting women — look like Gloria Steinem.

“Every single person in America who believes in gender equity should be having nightmares about JD Vance,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, head of Reproductive Equity Now. “This pick shines a bright light on the Republican Party’s true goal for America, and that is to make women subservient to men.”

This is a guy who opposed legislation to protect in vitro fertilization, and decries any choice people have about reproduction — even the choice to forgo getting pregnant in the first place.

It’s hard to understand that worldview gaining purchase with women in any state, but it obviously won’t fly in Massachusetts, where women who have made all kinds of decisions for themselves about children occupy powerful offices. Our leaders have biological children, stepchildren, adopted children, IVF children, and no children at all. Who cares?

“I can’t even handle a cat,” joked state Senator Lydia Edwards, who has neither children nor pets. “I guess I am barren and useless to society, with no redeeming qualities.”

To Edwards, Vance’s worldview — shared by all manner of incel and Silicon Valley tech bro — is less about women than about themselves.

“Their definition of manhood is so fragile,” said the East Boston Democrat. “They need women to be subservient and know their place. It is toxic and very scary.”

She is rightly offended by the absurd notion that a politician and labor attorney like her cannot be invested in the future of the nation unless she has given birth.

There is a good chance Vance’s extremism turns off women voters — and those who care about their rights — this year. Certainly, the week since Kamala Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the ticket has seen a massive outpouring of donations and organizing from women worried about losing more rights. But there’s also a good chance that the white women who have voted for a party that restricts their own rights in the last two presidential elections will vote against their own bodily autonomy again.

Heaven help us if there are more of them than of us.